
Bonk 'T 7 ^ S <o_ 



THE 



SPEECHES 



CHARLES 'PHILLIPS, ESQ, 



DELIVERED 



JIT THE EJIR, 



VARIOUS PUBLIC OCCASIONS, 



IRELAND AND ENGLAND. 



EDITED BY HIMSELF. 



FOURTH AMERICAN EDITION". 



- 



' c> of VVash^*^ 



ALEXANDRIA, D. C. 

7R3NXED AND PUBLISHED BY HAWl & THOMSON 

1820, 



THE 



FOLLOWING SPEECHES 

ARE, BY PERMISSION, 



DEDICATED TO 



WILLIAM ROSCOE, 



THE MOST SINCERE RESPECT 



AND AFFECTION 



OF THEIR 



AUTHOR. 



PREFACE. 
(BY JOHN FINLAY, ESQ.) 

THE Speeches of Phillips are now, for 
the first time, offered to the world in an authen- 
tic form. So far as his exertions hare been 
hitherto developed, his admirers, and they 
are innumerable, must admit, that the text of 
this volume is an acknowledged reference, to 
which future criticism may fairly resort, and 
from which his friends must deduce any title 
which th© Breaker may have created to the 
character of an orator. 

The interests of his reputation impose no 
necessity of denying many of those imper- 
fections which have been imputed to these 
productions. The value of all human exer- 
tion is comparative ; and positive excellence 
is but a flattering designation, even of the 
best products of industry and mind. 

There is, perhaps, but one way by which 
we could avoid all possible defects, and that 
is, by avoiding all possible exertion. The 
very fastidious, and the very uncharitable, 
may too often be met with, in the class of 
the indolent ; and the man of talent is gene- 
rally most liberal in his censure, whose in- 
dustry has given him least title to praise. — 
Thus defects and detraction are as the spots 



VI PREFACE. 

and shadow which of necessity adhere and 
attach to every object of honourable toil. 
Were it possible for the friends of Mr. Phil- 
lips to select those defects which could fill up 
the measure of unavoidable imperfection, 
and at the same time inflict least injury on 
his reputation, doubtless they would prefer 
the ble mis lies and errors natural to youth, 
consonant to genius, and consistent with an 
obvious and ready correction. To this des- 
cription, we apprehend, may be reduced all 
the errors that have been imputed through a 
system of wide-spreading and unwearied cri- 
ticism, animated by that envy with which in- 
dolence too oft regards the success of indus- 
try and talent, and subsidized by power in its 
struggle to repress the reputation and impor- 
tance of a rapidly rising young man, whom 
it had such good reason both to hate and fear. 
For it would be ignorance not to know, and 
knowing, it would be affectation to coitceal, 
that his political principles were a drawback 
on his reputation ; and that the dispraise of 
these speeches has been a discountable quan- 
tity for the promotion of placemen and the 
procurement of place. 

This system of depreciation thus power- 
fully wielded, even to the date of the present 
publication, failed not in its energy, though it 
has in its object ; nay more, it has succeeded 
in procuring for him the beneficial results of 



PREFACE. V1J 

a multiplying re-action. To borrow the ex- 
pression of an eminent classic, " the rays of 
their indignation collected upon him, served 
to illumine, but could not consume;" and 
doubtless, this hostility may have promoted 
this fact, that the materials of this volume 
are at this moment read in all the languages 
of Europe ; and whatever be the proportion 
of their merits to their faults, they are un- 
likely to escape the attention of posterity. 

The independent reader, whom this book 
may introduce to a first or more correct ac- 
quaintance with his eloquence, will therefore 
be disposed to protect his mind against these 
illiberal prepossessions thus actively diffused, 
on the double consideration that some defects 
are essential to such and so much labour, and 
that some detraction may justly be accounted 
for by the motives of the system whose vices 
he exposed. The same reader, if he had not 
the opportunity of hearing these speeches 
delivered by the author, will make in his fa- 
vour another deduction for a different reason, 

The great father of ancient eloquence was 
accustomed to say, that action was the firsts 
and second, and last quality of an orator. — 
This was the dictum of a supreme authority : 
it was an exaggeration notwithstanding ; but 
the observation must contain much truth to 
permit such exaggeration ; and whilst we al- 
low that delivery is not every thing, it will be 



Vlll PREFACE. 

allowed that it is much of the effect of ora- 
tory. 

Nature has heen bountiful to the subject of 
these remarks in the useful accident of a 
prepossessing exterior ; an interesting figure, 
an animated countenance, and a demeanour 
devoid of affectation, and distinguished by a 
modest self-possession, give him the favour- 
able opinion of his audience, even before he 
has addressed them. His eager, lively, and 
sparkling eye melts or kindles in pathos or 
indignation ; his voice, by its compass, sweet- 
ness, and variety, ever audible and seldom 
loud, never hurried, inarticulate, or indistinct, 
secures to his audicncee very word that he 
utters, and preserves liim from the painful 
appearance of effort, 

His memory is not less faithful in the con- 
veyance of his meaning, than his voice : un- 
like Fox in this respect, he never wants a 
word ; unlike Bushe, he never pretends to 
want one ; and unlike Grattan, he never ei- 
ther wants or recalls one. 

His delivery is freed from every thing fan- 
tastic — is simple and elegant, impressive and 
sincere; and if we add the circumstance of 
his youth to his other external qualifications, 
none of his contemporaries in this vocation 
can pretend to an equal combination of these 
accidental advantages. 

If, then, action be a great part of the ef- 



PREFACE, IX 

feet of oratory, the reader who has not heard 
him is excluded from that consideration, so 
important to a right opinion, and on which 
his excellence is unquestioned. 

The ablest and severest of all the .critics 
who have assailed him, (we allude of course 
to the Edinburgh Review,) in their criticism 
on Guthrie and Sterne, have paid him an in- 
voluntary and unprecedented compliment. — • 
He is the only individual in these countries to 
whom this literary work has devoted an en- 
tire article on a single speech ; and when it 
is recollected that the basis of this criticism 
was an unauthorized and incorrect publica- 
tion of a single forensic exertion in the ordi- 
nary routine of professional business, it is 
very questionable whether such a publication 
afforded a just and proportionate ground-work 
for so much general criticism, or a fair crite- 
rion of the alleged speaker's general merits. 
This criticism sums up its objections, and 
concludes its remarks, by the following com- 
mending observation, — that a more strict con- 
tronl over his fancy would constitute a reme- 
dy for his defects. 

Exuberance of fancy is certainly a defect, 

but it is evidence of an attribute essential to 

an orator. There are few men without some 

judgment, but there are many men without 

any imagination : the latter class never did 

and never can produce an orator* Without 
B 



X PREFACE. 

imagination, the speaker sinks to the mere 
dry arguer, the matter-of-fact man, the calcu- 
lator, or syllogist, or sophist ; the dealer in fi- 
gures ; the compiler of facts ; the mason, hut 
not the architect of the pile : for the dictate 
of the imagination is the inspiration of ora- 
tory, which imparts to matter animation and 
soul. 

Oratory is the great art of persuasion ; its 
purpose is to give, in a particular instance, a 
certain direction to human action. The fa- 
culties of the orator are judgment and ima- 
gination ; and reason and eloquence, the pro- 
duct of these faculties, must work on tie 
judgment and feelings of his audience for 
the attainment of his end. The speaker who 
addresses the judgment alone may be argu- 
mentative, but never can be eloquent ; for ar- 
gument instructs without interesting, and elo- 
quence interests without convincing; but ora- 
tory is neither; it is the compound of both; 
it conjoins the feelings and opinions of men ; 
it speaks to the passions through the mind, 
and to the mind through the passions ; and 
leads its audience to its just purpose by the 
combined and powerful agency of human 
reason and human feeling. The components 
of this combination will vary, of course, in 
proportion to the number and sagacity of the 
auditory which the speaker addresses. AVith 
judges it is to be hoped that the passions will 



PREFACE. XI 

be weak ; with public assemblies it is to be 
hoped that reasoning will be strong; but al- 
though the imagination may, in the first case, 
be unemployed, in the second it cannot be 
dispeused with ; for if the advocate of virtue 
avoids to address the feelings of a mixed as- 
sembly, whether it be a jury or a political 
meeting, he has no security that their feeling, 
and their bad feelings, may not be brought 
into action against him : he surrenders to his 
enemy the strongest of his weapons, and by 
a species of irrational generosity contrives to 
ensure his own defeat in the conflict. To ju- 
ries and public assemblies alone the following 
speeches have been addressed ; and it is by 
ascertaining their effect on these assemblies 
or juries, that the merit of the exertion should 
in justice be measured. 

But there seems a general and prevalent 
mistake among our critics on this judgment. 
They seem to think that the taste of the in- 
dividual is the standard by which the value of 
oratory should be decided. We do not con- 
sider oratory a mere matter of taste: it is a 
given means for the procurement of a given 
end ; and the fitness of its means to the at- 
tainment of its end should be in chief the 
measure of its merit — of this fitness success 
ought to be evidence. The preacher who can 
melt his congregation into tears, and excel 
others in his struggle to convert the superflu- 



Xll PREFACE. 

ities for the opulent into a treasury for the 
wretched ; — the advocate who procures the 
largest compensation from juries on their 
oaths, for injuries which they try ; — the man 
who, like Mr. Phillips, can he accused (if ever 
nny man was so accused, except himself) by 
grave lawyers, and before grave judges, of 
having procured a verdict from twelve saga- 
cious and most respectable special jurors by 
fascination ; of having, by the fascination of 
his eloquence, blinded them to that duty 
which they were sworn to observe : the man 
who can be accused of this on oath, and the 
fascination of whose speaking is made a 
ground-work, though an unsuccessful one, 
for setting aside a verdict ; he may be wrong 
and ignorant in his study and practice of 
oratory ; but, with all his errors and igno- 
rance, it must be admitted, that he has in some 
manner stumbled on the shortest way for at- 
taining the end of oratory— that is, giving 
the most forceful direction to human action 
and determination in particular instances. — 
His eloquence may be a novelty, but it is be- 
yond example successful ; and its success and 
novelty may be another explanation for the 
hostility that assails. It may be matter of 
taste, but it certainly would not be matter of 
judgment or prudence in Mr. Phillips to de- 
part from a course which has proved most 
successful, and which has procured for him 



PREFACE. XIU 

within the last year a larger number of rea- 
ders through the world than ever in the same 
time resorted to the productions of any man 

of these countries. His youth carries with 

•J 

it not only much excuse, but much promise 
of future improvement ; and doubtless he- 
will not neglect to apply the fruits of study 
and the lights of experience to each succeed- 
ing exertion. But his manner is his own, 
and every man's own manner is his best man- 
ner ; and so long as it works with this unex- 
ampled success, he should be slow to adopt 
the suggestions of his enemies, although he 
should be sedulous in adopting all legitimate 
improvement. To that very exuberance of 
imagination, we do not hesitate to ascribe 
much of his success ; whilst, therefore, he 
consents to controul it, let him be careful 
lest he clips his wings : nor is the strength 
of this faculty an argument, although it has 
been made an argument, against the strength 
of his reasoning powers; for let us strip 
these Speeches of every thing, whose deri- 
vation could be, by any construction, as- 
signed to his fancy ; let us apply this rule to 
bi^ judicial and political exertions — for in- 
stance, to the speech on Guthrie and Sterne, 
and the late one to the gentlemen of Liver- 
pool — let their topics be translated into 
plain, dull language, and then we would ask, 
what collection of topics could be more ju- 



XIV PREFACE. 

dicious, better arranged, or classed in a more 
lucid and consecutive order by the most tire- 
some wisdom of the sagest arguer at the 
bar? Is there not abundance to satisfy the 
judgment, even if there were nothing to 
sway the feelings, or gratify the imagination ? 
How preposterous, then, the futile endeavour 
to undervalue the solidity of the ground-work^ 
by withdrawing attention to the beauty of the 
ornament ; or to maintain the deficiency of 
strength in the base, merely because there 
appears so much splendour in the structure. 
Unaided by the advantages of fortune or 
alliance, under the frown of political power 
and the interested detraction of pi ofessional 
jealousy, confining the exercise of that ta- 
lent which he derives from his God to the ho- 
nour, and succour, and protection of his crea- 
tures — this interesting and highly-gifted 
young man runs his course like a giant, pros- 
pering and to prosper ; — in the court as a 
flaming sword, leading and lightning the in- 
jured to their own ; and in the public assem- 
bly exposing her wrongs — exacting her rights 
— conquering envy — trampling on corrup- 
tion — beloved by his country — esteemed by 
a world — enjoying and deserving an unex- 
ampled fame — and actively employing the 
summer of his life in gathering honours for 
his name, and garlands for his grave. 



CONTENTS 



Speech delivered at a Public Dinner given to Mr* 
Finlay by the Roman Catholics of the town and 
county of Sligo ---------- 1 

Speech delivered at an Aggregate Meeting of the Ro- 
man Catholics of Cork -------- 13 

Speech delivered at a Dinner given on Dinas Island, in 
the Lake of Killarney, on Mr. Phillips's health be- 
ing given, together with that of Mr. Payne, a young 
American ------------ 19 

Speech delivered at an Aggregate Meeting of the Ro- 
man Catholics for the county and city of Dublin - 31 

Petition referred to in the preceding speech, drawn by 
Mr. Phillips at the request of the Roman Catholics 
of Ireland ------------ 49 

The Address to H. R. HL the Princess of Wales, drawn 
by Mr. Phillips at the request of the Roman Catho- 
lics of Ireland ----------- 53 

Speech delivered by Mr. Phillips at a Public Dinner 
given to him by the friends of civil and religious li- 
berty in Liverpool --------„- 5.5 

Spe Jfc of Mr. Phillips in the case of Guthrie v. Sterne 
delivered ia the Court of Common Pleas, Dublin 65 



XVI CONTENTS. 

Speech of Mr. Phillips in the case of O'Mullan v. 
M'Korkill, delivered at the County Court-house, 
Galway 83 

Speech in the case of Connaghton v. Dillon, delivered 
in the County Court-house of Roscommon - - 101 

Speech of Mr. Phillips in the case of Creighton v. 
Townsend, delivered in the Court of Common Pleas, 
Dublin 113 

Speech in the case of Blake v. Wilkins, delivered in 
the County Court-house, Galway ----- 125 

A Character of Napoleon Buonaparte, down to the pe- 
riod of his exile to Elba -------- 141 

Speech of Mr. Philiips in the case of Brown v. Blake 
for crim. con. delivered in Dublin, on the 9th July, 
1817 145 

Speech in the case of Fitzgerald v. Kerr, delivered at 
Mayo's Assizes 161 



A SEKB3B3MH 

DELIVERED AT A PUBLIC DINNER, GIVEN TO 

MR. FINDLAY, 

25p tge iSomatt CatSoitcg 

OF THE TOWN AND COUNTY OF SLIGO. 



1 THINK, Sir, you will agree with me, that the most 
experienced speaker, might justly tremble in address- 
ing you, after the display you have just witnessed. 
What, then, must I feel, who never before addressed a 
public audience? However, it would be but an unworthy 
affectation in me, were I to conceal from you, the emo- 
tions with which I am agitated by this kindness. The 
exaggerated estimate which other countries have made 
of the few services so young a man could render, has, I 
hope, inspired me with the sentiments it ought ; but here, 
I do confess to you, I feel no ordinary sensation — here, 
where every object springs some new association, and 
the loveliest objects, mellowed as they are by tiute, rise 
painted on the eye of memory — here, where the light of 
heaven first blessed my infant view, and nature breath- 
ed into my infant heart, that ardour for my country 
which nothing but death can chill — here, ft here the 
scenes of my childhood remind me, how innocent I was, 
and the grave of my fathers admonish me, how pure I 
should continue — here, standing as 1 do amongst my 
fairest, fondest, earliest sympathies — such a welcome, 

D 



% A SPEECH 

operating, not merely as an affectionate tribute, but as 
a moral Testimony, does indeed quite oppress and over- 
whelm me. 

Oh ! believe me, warm is tbe heart that feels, and wil- 
ling is the. tongue that sr-eaks ; and still, I cannot, by 
shaping it to my rudely inexpressive phrase, shock the 
sensibility of a gratitude too full to be suppressed: and 
yet (how far!) too eloquent for language. 

If any circumstance could add to the pleasure of this 
day, it is that which i feel in introducing to the friends 
of my youth, the friend of my adoption, though perhaps 
I am committing one of oui imputed blunders, when I 
speak of introducing one whose patriotism has already 
rendered him familiar to every heart in Ireland ; a man, 
who, conquering everj disadvantage, and spurning eve- 
ry difficulty, has poured around our misfortunes the 
splendour of an intellect, that at once irradiates and con- 
sumes them. For the services he has rendered to his 
country, from my heart I thank him, and. for myself, I 
offer him a personal, it may be a selfish, tribute tor sav- 
ing me, by his presence this night, from an impotent at- 
tempt at his panegyric. Indeed, gentlemen, you can 
have little idea of what he has to endure, who, in these 
times, advocates youe cause. Every calumny which the 
venal, and the vulgar, and the vile are lavishing upon 
you, is visited with exaggeration upon us. We are call- 
ed traitors, because we would rally round the crown an 
unanimous people. We are called apostates, because we 
will not persecute Christianity. We are branded as se- 
paratists, because of our endeavors to annihilate the fet- 
ters, that, instead of binding, clog the connexion. To 
these may be added, the frowns of power, the envy of dul- 
ness, the mean malice of exposed self interest, and it 
may be, in despite of all natural affection, even the dis- 
countenance of kindred ! Well, be it so, — 

For thee, fair Freedom, welcome all the past, 
For thee, my country, welcome even the last! 

I am not ashamed to confess to you, that there w^s a day, 
when I was bigoted as the blackest ; but I thank the Be- 
ing who gifted me with a mind not quite impervious to 
iction, and I thank you, who . fforded such convinc- 
ing testimonies of my error, I saw you enduring with 



AT SLIGO. 5 

patience the most unmerited assaults, bowing before the 
insults of revived anniversaries: in private life, exempla- 
ry ; in public, unoffending : in the hour of peace, asserting 
your loyalty ; in the hour of danger, proving it. Even 
when an invading enemy vittoriousry penetrated into the 
very heart of our country, I saw the banner of your al- 
legiance beaming refutation on your slanderers ; was it 
a wonder then, tbat 1 seized my prejudices, and with a 
blush burned them on tbe altar of my country ! 

The great question of Catholic, shall I not rather say, 
of Irish emancipation, has now assumed that national 
aspect which imperiously challenges the scrutiny of eve- 
ry one. While it was shrouded in the mantle of reli- 
gious mystery, with tiie temple for its sanctuary, and the 
pontiff for its ccntinel, the vulgar eve might shrink and 
vulgar spirit shudder. But now it has come forth, visi- 
ble and tangible, for the inspection of the laity ; and I 
solemnly protest, dressed as it has been in the double 
haberdashery of the English minister and the Italian 
prelate, I know not whether to laugh at its appearance, 
or to loathe its pretensions — to shudder at the deformity 
of its original creation, or smilr a: the grott-squeness of 
its foreign decorations. Only just admire this far-famed 
security bill, — this motley compound of oaths and penal- 
ties, which, under the name of emancipation, would drag 
your prelates with a halter about their necks to the vul- 
gar scrutiny of every village-tyrant, in order to enrich a 
few political traders, and distil through some state alem- 
bic the. miserable rinsings of an ignorant, a decaying, 
and degenerate aristocracy ! Only just admire it ! Ori- 
ginally engendered by our friends the opposition, with 
a cuckoo insidiousness, they swindled it into the nest 
of the treasury ra\ens, and when it had been fairly 
hatched with the beak of tbe one, and the nakedness of 
the other, they sent it for its feathers to Monseigneur Qua- 
rantotii. who has obligingly transmitted it with the hun- 
ger of its parent, the rapacity of its nurse, and the cox- 
combry of its plumasier, to be baptised by the bishops, 
and received aequo gratoque animo by the people of Ire- 
land ! ! Oh, thou sublimely ridiculous Quarantotti ! Oh! 
thou superlative coxcomb <»f the conclave ! what an esti- 
mate lv.*st thou formed of the mod of Ireland ! Yet why 
should I blame this wretched scribe of the Propaganda ? 
He had every right to speculate as he did ; all the chances 



A SPEECH 



of the calculation were in his favour. Uncommon must 
be the people, over whom centuries of oppression have 
revolved in vain! Strange must he the mind., whirl) is not 
subdued by suffering! Sublime the spirit which is not 
debased bv servitude ? God, I ghre thee thanks !— he knew 
not Ireland. Bent— broken- -manacled as she has 
been, she will not bow to the mandate of an Italian slave, 
transmitted through an English vicar. For my own 
part, as an Irish Protestant, I trample to the earth this 
audacious and desperate experiment of authority ; and for 
you. as Catholics! the time is come to give that calumny 
the lie, which represents you as subservient to a foreign 
influence. That influence, indeed, seems not quite so 
unbending as it suited the purposes of bigotry to repre- 
sent it, and appears now not to have conceded more, only 
because more was not demanded. The theology ol the 
question is not for me to argue; it cannot be in better 
hands than in those of your bishops : and I hai e no doubt 
that when they bring their rank, their learning, their ta- 
lents, their piety, and their patriotism to this sublime 
deliberation, Ihcy will consult the dignity of that vene- 
rable fabric which has stood for ages, splendid and im- 
mutable : which time could not crumble, nor persecutions 
shake, nor revolutions change: which has stood amongst 
us like some stupendous and majestic Aj-peniue, the 
earth rorking at its feet, and the heavens roaring round 
its head, firmly balanced on the base of its eternity ; the 
relic of what was 5 the solemn and sublime memento ot^ 

WHAT MUST BE ! 

Is this my opinion as a professed member of the church 
of En-land"? Undoubtedly it is. As an Irishman, I 
I feel my liberties interwoven, and the best affections of 
my heart as it were enfibred with those of my Catholic 
countrymen; and as a Protestant, convinced of the 
nurityofmy own faith, would I not debase it by post- 
poning the 'powers of reason to the suspicious instru- 
mentality of this world's conversion 2 No : surrendering 
as I do. with a proud contempt, all the degrading ad- 
vantages with which an ecclesiastical usurpation would 
invest me: so I will not interfere with a blasphemous 
intrusion between any man and his Maker. I hold it a 
criminal and accursed sacrilege, to rob even a beggar o 
a sinele motive for his devotion ? and I hold it an equal 
insult to my own faith, to offer me any boon for its pro- 



AT SLIGO. 5 

fession. This pretended emancipation-bill passing into 
a law, would, in my mind, strike not a blow at this sect 
or that sect, but at the very vitality of Christianity it- 
self. 1 am thoroughly convinced that the anti -christian 
connexion between church and state, which it was suited 
to increase, has done more mischief to the Gospel inter- 
ests, than all the ravings of infidelity since the cruci- 
fixion. The sublime Creator of our blessed creed never 
meant it to be the channel of a courtly influence, or the 
source of a corrupt ascendancy. He sent it amongst us 
to heal, not to irritate ; to associate, not to seclude ; to 
collect together, like the baptismal dove, every creed and 
clime and colour in the universe, beneath the spotless 
wing of its protection. The union of church and state 
only converts good Christians into bad statesmen, and 
political knaves into pretended Christians. It is at best 
hut a foul and adulterous connexion, polluting the purity 
of heaven with the abomination of earth, and hanging 
the tatters of a political piety upon the cross of an insult- 
ed Saviour. Religion, Holy Religion, ought not, 
in the words of its Founder, to be " led into temptation." 
The hand that holds her chalice should be pure, and the 
priests of her temple should be spotless as the vestments 
of their ministry. Rank only degrades, wealth only 
impoverishes, ornaments but disfigure her. I would 
have her pure, unpensioned, unstipendiary ; she should 
rob the earth of nothing but its sorrows : a divine arch 
of promise, her extremities should rest on the horizon, 
and her span embrace the universe ; but her only suste- 
nance should be the tears that were exhaled and embel- 
lished by the sun-beam. Such is my idea of what reli- 
gion ought to be. What would this bill make it ? A men- 
dicant of the Castle, a menial at the levee, its manual 
the red-book, its liturgy the pension list, its gospel the 
will of the minister ! Methinks 1 see the stalled and fat- 
ted victim of its creation, Clinging with a brute suppii- 
ancy through the venal mob of ministerial flatterers, 
crouching to the ephemereal idol of the day, and, like 
the devoted sacrifice of ancient heathenism, glorying in 
the garland that only decorates him for death ! i will 
read to you the opinions of a celebrated Irishman, on 
the suggestion in his day, of a bill similar to that now 
proposed for our oppression. He was a man who added 
to the pride not merely of his country but of his species 



O A SPEECH 

— a man who robed the \qv\ soul of inspiration in the 
splendours of a purr, and over-powering eloquence. I 

allude to Mr. Burke — an authority at least to which the 
sticklers for establishments can offer no <>bje<tion. — 
" Before I had written thus far." sa\ s he. in his letter on 
na! la* s, • • I beard of a scheme for giving to the Cas- 
tle the patronage of the pr Members of the Catho- 
lic clergy. At first 1 could scarcely credit it. for I believe 
it is the first time that tbe presentation to other people's 
, debited in an} country. Ne%*er were the 
members of one religious sect fit to appoint the pastors to 
another, ft is a great deal to suppose that the present 
Castle would nominate bishops for the Roman church in 
Ireland, with a religious regard for it* welfare. Per- 
haps they cannot, perhaps they dare not do it. But 
suppose them to be as well inclined, as 1 know that I 
am. to do the Catholics ail kinds of justice, I declare I 
would not, if it were in my power, take that patronage 
on myself. I know I ought not to do it. 1 belong to 
another community : and it would he an intolerable usur- 
pation in re I conferred no benefit, or even if I 
did confer tempera! advantages. How can the Lord 
Lieutenant form the least judgment on their merits - 
to decide which of the popish priests is fit to be a bishop ? 
It cannot be. The idea is ridiculous. He w ill hand 
them over to Lord Lieutenants of counties, justices of 
the peace. a:oi others, who, for the purpose of vexing 
and turning into derision this miserable people, will pick 
out the worst and most obnoxious they can find amongst 
the clergy to govern tbe rest. Whoever is complained 
nst by his brother, will be considered as persecuted ; 
whoever is censured by his superior, will bt* looked up- 
on as oppressed : v, hoever is careless in his opini 
loos? ilibc called a liberal man, and 
to have incurred hatred because he was 
Informers, tale beams, perverse and 
stinate men, flatterers* who turn their back upon their 
flnrk, the Protestant gentlemen ol their coun- 
ts, will I jects of prefei nid then J run no 

batever i iet, and mo- 

ralit) yc- the country will be lost." 

such char aeti i ded 

by Burki influent 

ted to your priesthood : Believe me, you would soon see 



AT SLIGO. 7 

them transferring their devotion from the Cross to the 
Castle ; wearing their sacred vestments hut as a mas- 
querade appendage, and, under the degraded passport of 
the AJmighty's name, sharing the pleasures of the court 
and the spoils of the people. When I say this, I am hound 
to add, and I do so from many proud and pleasing re- 
collections, that F think the impression on the Catholic 
clergy of the present day would he late, and would he de- 
lible. But it is human nature. Rare are the instances 
in which a contact with the court lias not been the he- 
ginning of corruption. The man of God is peculiarly 
disconnected with it. it directly violates his special 
mandate, who took his birth from the manger, and his 
disciples from the fishing boat. Judas was the first 
who received the money of power, and it ended in the 
disgrace of his creed, and the death of his master. If I 
were a Catholic, I would peculiarly deprecate any inter- 
ference with my priesthood* Indeed, I do not think, in 
any one respect in which we should wish to view the de- 
legates of the Almighty, that, making fair allowances 
for human infirmity* they could he amended. The Ca- 
tholic clergy of Ireland are rare examples of the doc- 
trines they inculcate. Pious in their habits, almost pri- 
mitive in their manners, they ha\e no care hut their 
flock— no study hut their gospel. It is not in the gaudy 
ring of courtly dissipation that you will find the Mur- 
rats, the Coppijvgers, and the Motlans of the pre- 
sent day — not at the levee, or the lounge, or the election 
riot. JNo : you will find them wherever good is to be 
done, ore\iltohe corrected— -rearing their mitres in 
the van of isery, consoling the captive, reforming the 
convict, enriching the orphan ; ornaments of this world, 
and emblems of a better ; preaching their God through 
the practice of every virtue ; monitors at the confessional, 
apostles in the pulpit,' saints at the death-bed, holding 
the sacred water to the lip of sin, or pouring the redeem- 
ing unction on the agonies of despair. Oh, I would 
hold him little better than the Promethean robber, who 
would turn the fire of their eternal altar into the impure 
and perishable mass of this world's preferment. Better 
by far that the days of ancient barbarism should revive 
-—better that your religion should again take refuge 
among the fastnesses of the mountain, and ihe solitude 
of the cavern — better that the rack of a murderous hi- 



A SPEECH 



gotry should again terminate the miseries of your priest- 
hood, and that the gate of freedom should be only open 
to them through the sate of martyrdom, than they should 
s;ild their missals with the wages of a court, and expect 
their ecclesiastical promotion, not from their superior, 
pietv, but their comparative prostitution. 

But why this interference with your principles of 
conscience"? Why is it that they will not erect your li- 
berties save on the ruin of your temples? Why is it 
that in the day of peace they demand securities from a 
people who in the day of danger constituted their 
strength? When were they denied every security that 
was reasonable ? Was it in 1776, when a cloud of ene- 
mies, hovering on our coast, saw every heart a shield, 
ar-d every bill a fortress? Did they want securities in 
Catholic Spain ? V ere they denied securities in Catho- 
lic Portugal? What is their security to dav in Catho- 
lic Canada? Return — return to us our own glorious 
Wellin&t. n. and tell incredulous England what was 
her security amid the lines of Torres Vedras, or on the 
summit of Barrossa ! Rise, libelled martyrs of the pe- 
ninsula !— rise from your " gorj bed," and give security 
for your childless parents ! No, there is not a Cath lie 
family in Ireland, that for the glory of Great Britain is 
not weeping over a child's, a brother's, or a parent's 
gra\e. and yet still she clamours for securities! Oh, 
Prejudice, wh re is thy reason ! Oh, Big- trj ! where is 
tin blush! If ever there was an opportunity for England 
to combine gratitude with justice, aud dignity with safe- 
ty, it is the present Now, when Irish blood has crim- 
soned the cross upon her naval flag, and an Irish hero 
strikes the harp to victory upon the summit of the Pyre- 
nees! England— England ! do not hesitate. This hour 
of triumph maj be but the bom of trial ; another season 
may see the s| lend id panorama of European vassalage, 
arrayed by your ruthless enemy, and glittering beneath 
the ruins of another capitol — perhaps of London. Who 
can say it? A few months since, Moscow stood as splen- 
did and as secure. Eair rose the morn on the patriarchal 
city— the e. press of her nation, the queen of commerce, 
the sanctuary of strangers, h-r thousand spires pierced 
the \erv heavens, and her domes of gold reflet ted bark 
the sunbeams. The spoiler came; he marked her for 
his victim ', and, as it lus very glance was destiny, even 



AT SLIG0. 9 

before the nightfall, with all her pomp, and wealth, and 
happiness, she withered from the world! A heap of 
ashes told where once stood Moscow ! Merciful God, if 
this lord of desolation, heading his locust legions, were 
to invade our country ; though I do not ask what would 
be your determination; though, in the language of our 
young enthusisast, I am sure you would oppose him with 
"a sword in one hand, and a torch in the other ;" still 
I do ask, and ask with fearlessness, upon what single 
principle of policy or of justice, could the advocates for 
your exclusion solicit your assistance — could they expect 
you to support a constitution from whose benefits you 
were debarred ? With what front could they ask you to 
recover an ascendency, which in point of fact was but 
re-establishing your bondage ! 

It has been said that there is a faction in Ireland ready 
to join this despot—-." a French party," as Mr. Grattan 
thought it decent, even in the very senate-house, to pro- 
mulgate. Sir, I speak the universal voice of Ireland 
when I say, she spurns the imputation. There is no 
" French party" here ; but there is— and it would be 
strange if there was not — there is an Irish party — men 
who cannot bear to see their country taunted with the 
mockery of a constitution — men who will be content with 
no connexion that refuses them a community of benefits 
while it imposes a community of privations- men, who 
sooner than sec this land polluted by the footsteps of a 
slave, would wish the ocean-wave became its sepulchre, 
and that the orb of heaven forgot where it existed. It 
has been said too (and when we were to be calumniated., 
what has not been said?) that Irishmen are neither fit for 
freedom or grateful for favours. In the first place 3 I de- 
ny that to be a favour which is a right; and in the next 
place, I utterly deny that a system of conciliation has 
ever been adopted with respect to Ireland. Try them, 
and, my life on it, they will be found grateful. I think 
1 know my countrymen ; they cannot help being grateful 
for a benefit; and there is no country on the earth where 
one would be conferred with more characteristic benevo- 
lence. They are, emphatically, the school-boys of the 
heart — a people of sympathy ; their acts spring instinc- 
tively from their passions ; by nature ardent, by instinct 
brave, by inheritance generous. The children of im- 
pulse, they cannot avoid their virtues; and to be other 

B 



|0 A SPEECH 

than noble, they must not only be unnatural but unna- 
tional. Put my panegyric to the tost. Enter the hovel 
of the Irish peasant. I do not say you will find the fru- 
gality of the Scotch, the comfort of the English, or the 
fantastic decorations of the Fre«c\cottager ; but ! do say, 
within those wretched bazars of mud and misery, you 
will find sensibility the most affecting, politeness the 
most natural, hospitality the most grateful, merit the 
most urn onsi ;ous ; their look is eloquence, their smile is 
love, their retort is wit, their remark is wisdom not a 
wisdom borrowed from the dead, but that with which na- 
ture has herseif inspired them ; an acute observance of the 
passing scene, and a deep Insight into the motive* of its 
agent." Try to deceive them, and see with what shrewd- 
ness they will detect; tr\ to outwit them, and see with 
what humour they wiU'chide; attack them with argu- 
ment, and von will stand amazed at tbe strength ot their 
expression,* the rapidity oil their ideas, and the energy of 
their gesture ! In abort, God seems to have formed our 
country like our people: he has thrown round the one its 
wild, magnificent, decorated rudeness : he has infused 
into the other the simplicity of genius and the seeds of 
virtue : he says audibly to us, "Give them cultivation.'' 
This is the'way. gentlemen, in which 1 have always 
looked upon your question—not as a party, or a secta- 
rian, or a Catholic, but as as an Irish question. Is it 
possible that any man can seriously believe the paralys- 
ing five millions of such a people as 1 have been descri- 
bing, can be a benefit to the empire ! Is there any man 
who deserves the name not of a statesman but of a ra- 
tional being, who can think it politic to rob such a mul- 
titude of all the energies of an honorable ambition ? Look 
to protectant Ireland, shootii g over the empire those rays 
o»' genius, and those thunderbolts of war* that ha\c at 
once embellished and preserved it. I speak not of a for- 
mer era. 1 refer not ior my example to the da} just 
passed, when our Burkes, our Barrys, and our Gold- 
smiths, exiled by this system from their natne shore, 
wreathed the •* immortal shamrock" round the brow of 
painting, poetry, and eloquence ! But now, even while I 
speak, who leads the British senate 2 A Protestant Irish- 
man ! Who guides the British arms ? A Protestant Irish- 
man ! And aIiv. wii\ is Catholic Ireland, with her quin- 
tuple population, stationary and silent ? Have physical 



AT SL1G0. 11 

tattses neutralised its energies : Has the religion of 
Christ stupefied its intellect? Has the God of mankind 

become the partisan of a monopoly, and put an interdict 
on its advancement I Stranger, do n rt stek the bigoted 
and pampered renegade who has an interest in deceiving 
you ; but open the penal statutes, and weep tears of 
blood over the reason. Come, come yourself, and see 
this unhappy people;: see the Irishman, the only alien 
in Irel n ! , in rags and wretchedness, staining the sweet- 
est scenery ever eye reposed on. persecuted by the ex- 
torting middle man of some absentee landlord, plunder- 
ed bv the lay-proctor of some rapacious and unsympa- 
thiziug incumbent, bearing through life but insults and 
injustice, ai d ben aved even of any hope in death by the 
heart-rending reflection that be leaves his children to 
bear like their father an abominable bondage! is this 
the fact ? Let any man who doubts it walk out into your 
Streets, and see the consequences of such a system ; see 
it rearing up crowds in a kind of apprenticeship to the 
prison, absolute!} permitted by their parents {'torn utter 
despair to lisp the alphabet and learn the rudiments of 
profligacy ! For my part, never did 1 meet one of these 
youthful assemblages, without feeling within me a me- 
lancholy emotion-. How often have 1 thought, within 
that little circle of neglected t.iflers who seem to have 
been born in caprice and bred in orphanage, there may 
exist seme mind formed of the finest mould, and wrought 
for immortality : a soul swelling with the energies and 
stamped with the patent of the Deity, which under pro- 
per culture might perhaps bless, adorn, immortalize, or 
ennoble empires ; some Cincinnati^, in whose breast 
the destinies of a nation may lie dormant : some Milton, 
"pregnant with celestial lire ;" some Cukrak, who when 
thrones were crumbled and dynasties forgotten, might 
stand the landmark "f bis country's genius, rearing him- 
self amid regal ruins and national dissolution, a mental 
pyramid in the solitude of time, beneath whose shade 
things might moulder, and round whose summit eternity 
must play. Even in such a circle the y«»uug Demosthe- 
nes might have once been Found, and Homer, the dis- 
grace and glory of his age. have sung neglected ! Have 
not other nations witnessed those things, and who shall 
say that nature ha^ peculiarly degraded the intellect of 
Ireland ? Oh ! my countrymen, let us hope, that under 



12 A SPEECH AT SLIG(;. 

better auspices and a sounder policy, the ignorance that 
thinks so may find its refutation. Let us turn from the 
blight and ruin of this wintry day to the fond anticipa- 
tion of a happier period, when our prostrate land shall 
stand erect among the nations, fearless and unfettered ; 
her brow blooming with the wreath of science, and her 
path strew r ed with the offerings of art ; the breath of hea- 
ven blsssing her flag, the extremities of earth acknow- 
ledging her name, her fields waving with the fruits of 
agriculture, her ports alive with the contributions of 
commerce, and her temples vocal with unrestricted piety. 
Such is the ambition of the true patriot ; such are the 
views for whieh we are calumniated ! Oh, divine ambi- 
tion ! Oh, delightful calumny ! Happy he who shall see 
thee accomplished ! Happy he who through every peril 
tails for thy attainment! Proceed, friend of Ireland and 
partaker of her wrongs, proceed undaunted to this glo- 
rious consummation. Fortune will not gild, power will 
not ennoble thee ; but thou shalt be rich in the love and 
titled by the blessings of thy country; thy path shall be 
illumined by the public eye, thy labours lightened by the 
public gratitude ; and, oh, remember — amid the impe- 
diments with which corruption will oppoee, and the de- 
jection with which disappointments may depress you— 
remember you are acquiring a name to be cherished by 
the future generations of earth, long after it has been en- 
rolled amongst the inheritors of heaven. 



Delivered at a dinner, given on 

DINAS ISLAND, 

IN THE LAKE OF KILLARNEY, 

ON 

Ifir* $ WWi ^ealtfi 25etng <&i\)tn> 

TOGETHER "WITH THAT OF 

MR. PAYNE, A YOUNG AMERICAN. 



IT is not with the vain hope of returning by words the 
kindnesses which have been literally showered on me 
during the short period of our acquaintance, that i nnw 
interrupt, for a moment, the flow of your festivity. In- 
deed, it is not necessary; an Irishman need no requital 
for his hospitality ; its generous impulse is the instinct 
of his nature, and the very consciousness of the act car- 
ries its recompense along with it. But, Sir, there are 
sensations excited by an allusion in your toast, under the 
influence of which silence would be impossible. To be 
assodated with Mr. Payne must be, to any one who 
regards private virtues and personal accomplishments, a 



14 A SPEECH 

source of peculiar pride ; and that feeling is not a little 
enhanced in me by the recollection of rhe countrv to 
which vve are indebted for his qualifications. Indeed, 
th«- mention of America has never failed to fill Bole with 
the most lively emotions. In my earliest infancy, that 
tender season when impressions, at once the most per- 
manent and the most powerful, are likely to be excited, 
the story of her then recent struggle raised a throb in 
ever) heart that loved liberty, and wrung a reluctant 
tribute even from discomfited oppression. I saw her 
spurning alike the luxuries that would enervate, and 
the legions that would intimidate; dashing from her lips 
the poisoned cap of European servitude ; and through 
all the vicissitudes of her protracted conflict, displaying 
a magnanimity that defied misfortune, and a moderation 
that gave now grace to victory. It was the first vision 
of my childhood j it will descend with me to the grave. 
Bui if, as a man. I venerate the mention of America, 
what must be my feelings towards her as an Irishman. 
Never, oh never, while memory remains, can Ireland 
forget The home of her emigrant, and the asylum of her 
exile. No matter whether "their sorrows sprung from 
the errors of enthusiasm, or the realities of suffering, 
front fancy or infliction : that must be reserved for the 
scrutiny of those whom the lapse of time shall acquit of 
partiality. It is for the men of other ages to investigate 
and record it ; but surely it is for the men of every age 
to hail the hospitality that received the shelterless, and 
love the feeling that befriended the unfortunate. Search 
creation round, where can you find a country that pre- 
sents so sublime a view, so interesting an anticipation ? 
What noble institutions ! What a comprehensive policy » 
^ hat a wise equalization of every political advantage ! 
T! e oppressed of all countries, the martyrs of every 
creed, the innocent victim of despotic arrogance or su- 
perstitious phrenzy, may there find refuge ; his industry 
encouraged, his piety respected, his ambition animated ; 
with no restraint but those laws whi< It are the same to 
all. and no distinction but that which his merit may ori- 
ginate. M ho can deny that the exixtence of such a 
Country 'presents a subject for human congratulation! 
Whu can deny, that its gigantic advancement offers a 
field for the most rational conjecture ! At the end of the 
very next century, if she proceeds as she seems to pro- 



AT DINAS ISLAND. 1$ 

snise, what a wondrous spectacle may she not exhibit ! 
Who shall say for what purpose a mysterious Providence 
may not have designed her! Who shall say thar when, 
in its follies or its crimes, the old world may ha\e inter- 
red all the pride of its power, and all the pomp of its ci- 
vilization, human nature may not find its destined reno- 
vation in the new ! For myself, ] have no doubt of it. 
I have not the least doubt that when our temples and our 
trophies shall have mouldered into dust — when the glo- 
ries of our name shall be but the legend of tradition, and 
the light of our achievements only live in song ; philoso- 
phy will rise again in the sky of her Franklin, and glo- 
ry rekindle at the urn of her Washington. Is this the 
vision of a romantic fancy ? Is it even improbable ? Is 
it half so improbable as the events which for the last 
twenty years have rolled like successive tides over the 
surface of the European world, each erasing the impres- 
sion that preceded it ? Thousands upon thousands, Sir, 
I know there are, who will consider this supposition as 
wild as whimsical ; but they have dwelt with Tittle re- 
flection upon the records of the past. They have but ill 
observed the never ceasing progress of national riseand 
national ruin. They form their judgment on the de- 
ceitful stability of the present hoiii, never considering 
the innumerable monarchies and republics, in former 
days, apparently as permanent, their very existence be- 
come now the subjects of speculation, I had almost said 
of scepticism. I appeal to History ! i ell me, thou re- 
verend chronicler of the grave, can all the allusions of 
ambition realised, can all the wealth of a universal com- 
merce, can all the achievements of successful heroism, or 
all the establishments of this world's wisdom, secure to 
empire the permanency of its possessions 2 Alas, Troy 
thought so once ; yet the land of Priam lives only in 
song ! Thebes thought so once ; yet her hundred gates 
4iave crumbled, and her very tombs are but as the dust 
they were vainly intended to commemorate ! So thought 
Palmyra — where is she? So thought Persepolis — and now 

" Yon waste, where raming lions howl, 
Yon aisle, where moans the graj^-eyed owl, 
Shows the proud Tersian's great abode, 
Where sc« ptred once, an earthly godj 
His power-clad arm controlled each happier clime, 
Where sports the warbling muse, and fancy soars sublime.' 



16 A SPEECH 

So thought the countries of Demosthenes and the Spar- 
tan, yet Leonidas is trampled by the timid slave, and 
Athens insulted by the servile, mindless, and enervate 
Ottoman ! In his hurried march, Time has but looked 
at their imagined immortality, and all ifs vanities, from 
the palace to the tomb, have, with their ruins, erased the 
very impression of his footsteps ! The days of their 
glory are as if they had never been ; and the island 
that was then a speck, rude and neglected in the barren 
ocean, now rivals the ubiquity of their commerce, the 
gl >ry of their arms, the fame of their philosophy, the 
eloquence of their senate, and the inspiration of their 
bards ! Who shall say, then, contemplating the past, 
that England, proud and potent as she appears, may not 
one day be what Athens is, and the young America yet 
soar to be what Athens was ! Who shall say, when 
the European column shall have mouldered, and the 
night of barbarism obscured its very ruins, that that 
mighty continent may not emerge from the horizon to 
rule for its time sovereign of the ascendant ! 

Such, Sir, is the natural progress of human opera- 
tions, and such the unsubstantial mockery of human 
pride. But I should, perhaps, apologize for this di- 
gression. The tombs are at best a sad although an in- 
structive subject. At all events, they are ill suited to 
such an hour as this. I shall endeavor to atone for it, 
by turning to a theme which tombs cannot inurn or re- 
volution alter. It is the custom of your board, and a 
noble one it is, to deck the cup of the gay with the gar- 
land of the great; and surdy, even in the eyes of its 
deity, his grape is not the less lovely when glowing be- 
neath the foliage of the palm tree and the myrtle. — Al- 
low me to add one flower to the chaplet, which, though 
it sprang in America, is no exotic. Virtue planted it, 
and it is naturalized every where. I see you anticipate 
me — I see you concur with me, that it matters very little 
what immediate spot may be the birth-place of such a 
man as Washington. No people can claim, no country 
can appropriate him ; the boon of Providence to the hu- 
man race, his fame is eternity, and his residence crea- 
tion. Though it was the defeat of our arms, and the 
disgrace of our policy, 1 almost bh-ss the convulsion in 
Which he had his origin. If the h-avens thundered and 
the earth rocked, vet, when the storm passed, how pure 



AT DINAS ISLASTB- IT 

was the climate that it cleared ; how bright in the brow 
of the firmament was the planet which it revealed to us! 
In the production of Washington, it does really appear 
as if nature was endeavoring to improve upon herself, 
and that all the virtues of the ancient wo»ld were but so 
many studies preparatory to the patriot of the new. In- 
dividual instances no doubt there were; splendid exem- 
plifications of some single qualification ; Ctesar was 
merciful, Scipio was continent, Hannibal was patient 5 
but it was reserved for Washington to blend them all in 
one, and like the lovely chef d'ceuvrc of the Grecian ar- 
tist, to exhibit in one glow of associated beauty, tbe 
pride of every model, and the perfection of every master. 
As a general, he marshalled the peasant into a veteran, 
and supplied by discipline the absence of experience, as 
a statesman, he enlarged the policy of the cabinet into 
the most comprehensive system of general advantage ; 
and such was the wisdom of his views iind the philoso- 
phy of his counsels, that to the soldier and the statesman 
he almost added the character of the sage ! A conqueror, 
he was untainted with the crime of blood ; a revolution- 
ist, he was free from any stain of treason ; for aggression 
commenced the contest, and his country called him to 
the command. — Liberty unsheathed his sword, necessity 
stained, victory returned it. If he had paused here, his- 
tory might have doubted what station to assign him, 
whether at the head of her citizens or her soldiers, her 
heroes or her patriots. Bui the last glorious art crowns 
his career, and banishes all hesitation. Who, like Wash- 
ington, after having emancipated a hemisphere, resigned 
his crown and preferred the retirement of domestic life 
to the adoration ot a land he might be almost said to have 
created ! 

" How shall we rank thee upon glory's page, 
Thou more than soldier, and just less than sage j 
All thou hast been reflects Jess fame on thee, 
Far less than all thou hast forborne to be !" 

Such, Sir, is the testimony of one not to he accused of 
partiality in his estimate of America. Happy, proud 
America ! the lightnings of heaven yielded to your phi- 
losophy ! The temptations of earth could not seduce 
your patriotism ! 

I have the honour, Sir, of proposing to you as a toast, 
the immortal memory of George Washington ! 



A smSQKBIB 



DELIVERED AT 



AN AGGREGATE MEETING 



OF 



€Se Soman Catgoficg of €orft< 



It is with no small degree of self congratulation that 
I at length find myself in a province which every glance 
of the eye, and every throb of the heart, tells me is truly 
Irish ; and that congratulation is not a little enhanced 
by finding you receive me not quite as a stranger. In- 
deed, if to respect the Christian without regard to his 
creed, if to love the country but the more for its calami- 
ties, if to hate oppression though it be robed in power, 
if to venerate integrity though it pine under persecution, 
gives a man any claim to your recognition ; then indeed 
I am not a stranger amongst you. There is a bond of 
union between brethren, however distant; there is a 
sympathy between the virtuous, however separated $ 
there is a heaven-born instinct by which the associates of 
the heart become at once acquainted, and kindred natures, 
as it were, by magic see in the face of a stranger, the fea- 
tures of a friend. Thus it is that, though we never met, 
you hail in me the sweet association, and I feel myself 
amongst you even as if I were in the home of my nativi- 
ty. But this my knowledge of you uas not left to 
chance ; nor was it left to the records of your charity, 



20 A SPEECH 

the memorials of your patriotism, your municipal mag- 
nificence, or your commercial splendour ; it came to me 
hallowed by the accents of that tongue on which Ireland 
has so often hung with ecstasy, heightened by the elo- 
quence and endeared by the sincerity of, I hope, our mu- 
tual friend. Let me congratulate him on having be- 
come in some degree naturalized in a province, where 
the spirit of the elder day seems to have lingered ; and 
let me congratulate you on the acquisition of a man who 
is at once the zealous advocate of your cause, and a 
practical instance of the injustice of your oppressions. 
Surely, surely if merit had fair play, if splendid falents, 
if indefatigable industry, if great research, if unsullied 
principle, if a heart full of the finest affections, if a mind 
matured in every manly accomplishment, in short, I 
every noble, public quality, mellow; d and reflected inthe 
pure mirror of do nestic virtue, could entitle a subject to 
distinction in a st<)te, Air. O* Council should be distin- 
guished ; but, it is his crime to be a Catholic, and his 
curse to be an Irishman. Simpleton J he prefers his 
conscience to a place, nnd the love of his country to a 
participation in her plunder! Indeed he will never rise, 
if he joined the bigots of my sect, he might be a ser- 
geant; if he joined the infidels of your sect, he might 
enjoy a pension, and there is no knowing whether some 
Orange-corporator, or an Orange-anniversary, might 
not modestly yield him the precedence of giving « the 
glorious and immortal memory." Oh, yes. he might be 
privileged 10 get drunk in gratitude to the man who co- 
lonized ignorance in his native land, and left to his 
creed the legacy of legalized persecution. Nor would he 
stand alone, no matter what might be the measure of his 
disgrace, or the degree of his dereliction. You well 
know there are many of your own community who would 
leave him at the distance-post. In Contemplating their 
recreancy, I should be almost tempted to smile at the 
exhibition of their pretensions, if there was not a kind 
of moral melancholy intermingled, that changed satire 
into pity, and ridicule into contempt. For my part, I 
behold them in the apathy of their servitude, as 1 would 
some miserable maniac in the contentment of his capti- 
vity. Poor creature ! w he'll all that raised him from 
the brute is levelled, and his glorious intellect is moul- 
dering in ruins, you may see him with his song of tri- 



AT CG51E. 21 

timph, and his crown of straw, a fancied freeman mid 
the clanking of bis chains, and an imaginary monarch 
beneath the inflictions of his keeper! Merciful God ! is 
it not almost an argument for the sceptic and the disbe- 
liever, when we see the human shape almost without an 
aspiration of the human soul, separated by no bounda- 
ry from the beasts that perish, beholding with indiffe- 
rence the captivity of their country, the persecution of 
their creed, and the helpless, hopeless destiny of their 
children ? But tiiey have nor creed, nor consciences, nor 
country ; their god is gold, their gospel is a contract, 
their church a counting-house, their characters a com- 
modity ; they never pray but for the opportunities of 
coemption, and hold their consciences, as they do their 
government-debentures, at a price proportioned to the 
misfortunes of their country. But let us turn from those 
mendicants of disgrace : though Ireland is doomed to 
the stain of their birth, her mind need not he sullied by 
their contemplation, I turn from them with pleasure to 
the contemplation of your cause, which, as far as argu- 
ment can affect it, stands on a sublime and splendid 
elevation. Every obstacle has vanished into air; every 
favourable circumstance has hardened into adamant. 
The Pope, whom childhood was taught to lisp as the 
enemy of religion, and age shuddered at as a prescrip- 
tive calamity, has by his example put the princes of 
Christendom to shame. This day of miracles, in which 
the human heart has been strung to its extremest point of 
energy ; this day, to which posterity will look for in- 
stances of every crime and every virtue, holds not in its 
page of wonders a more sublime phenomenon than that 
calumniated pontiff. Placed at the very pinnacle of hu- 
man elevation, surrounded by the pomp of the Vatican 
and the splendours of the court, pouring the mandates 
of Christ from the throne of the Caesars, nations were 
his subjects, kings were his companions, religion was 
his handmaid ; he went forth gorgeous with the accu- 
mulated dignity of ages, exery knee bending, and every 
eye blessing the prince of one world and the prophet of 
another. Have we not seen him, in one moment, his 
crown crumbled, his sceptre a reed, his throne a shadow, 
his home a dungeon ! But if we have, Catholics, it was 
only to shew how inestimable is human virtue compared 
with human grandeur ; it was only to shew those whose 



22 ± SPEECH 

faith was failing, and whose fears were strengthening, 
that the simplicity of the patriarchs, the piety pf fhe 
saints, and the patience of the martyrs, had not wholly 
vanished. Perhaps it was also ordained to shew the 
bigot at home, as well as the tyrant abroad, I hat 
though the person might be chained, and the motive ca- 
lumniated, Religion was still strong enough to support 
her sons, and to confound, if she could not reclaim, her 
enemies. No tin eats could awe, no promises could 
temp?, no sufferings could appal hint ; mid the damps of 
his dungeon he dashed away the rup in which the pearl 
of his liberty was to be dissolved. Only reflect on the 
state of the world at thai moment! All around him was 
convulsed, the very foundations of the earth seemed 
giving way, the comet was lei loose that «• from its fiery 
hair shook pestilence and death," the twilight was ga- 
thering, the* tempest was roaring, the darkness was at 
hand ; but he towered sublime, like the last mountain in 
the deluge — majestic, not less in his elevation than in 
his solitude, immutable amid change, magnificent amid 
ruin, the last remnant of earth's beauty, the last resting 
place of heaven's light! Thus have the terrors of the Va- 
tican retreated ; thus has that cloud which hovered 
o'er your cause brightened at once into a sign of your 
faith and an assurance of your victory. — Another obsta- 
cle, the omnipotence of Fbakce : I know it was a pre- 
tence, but it was made an obstacle— What has become 
of it? The spell of her invincibility destroyed, the spirit 
of her armies broken, her immense boundary dismem- 
bered, and the lord of her empire become the exile of a 
rock. She allows fancy no fear, and bigotry no spe- 
ciousness ; and, as if in the very operation of the change 
to point the purpose of your redemption, the hand that 
replanted the rejected lily was that of an Irish Catholic. 
Perhaps it is not also unworthy ol remark, that tin last 
day of her triumph, and the first of her decline, was that 
on which her insatiable chieftain smote the holy head of 
your religion. You will hardly suspect 1 am imbued 
with the follies of superstition ; but when the man now 
unborn shall trace the story of that eventful day, he 
will seethe adopted child of fortune borne on the wings 
of victory from clirne to clime, marking every move- 
ment with a triumph, and every pause with a crown, 
till lime, space, seasons, nay, even nature herself, seem- 



AT CORK. 2S 

ins: to vanish from before him. in the blasphemy of his 
ambition he s n »te the apostle of bis God. and dared to 
the everlasting Cross amid his perishable trophies ! 
I am no fanatic, but is it not remarkable ? May it not 
be one of those signs which the Dei-y lias sometimes 
given in compassion to our infirmity; signs, which in 
the punishment of one nation not nnfrequeutly denote the 
warning to another ; — 

11 Signs sent bv God to mark the will of Heaven. 
Signs, which bid nations weep and be forgiven/' 

The argument, however, is taken from the bigot ; and 
those whose consciousness taught them to expect what 
your loyalty should have taught them to repel, can no 
longer oppose you from the terrors of invasion. Thus, 
then, the papal phantom and the French threat have va- 
nished into nothing. — Another obstacle, the tenets of 
your creed. Ha3 England still to learn them ? I will 
tell her whpre. Let her ask Canada, the last plank of 
her American shipwreck. Let her ask Portugal, the 
first omen of her European splendour. Let her ask 
Spain, the most Catholic country in the universe, her 
Catholic friend?, her Catholic allies, her rivals in the 
triumph, her reliance in the retreat, iier last stay when 
the world hat 1 d her. They must have told her 

on the field of Mood, whether it was true that they •• kept 
no faith with heretics." Alas, alas ! how miserable a 
thing is bigotry, when every friend outs it to the blush, 
and every triumph but rebukes its weakness. If Eng- 
land continued still to accredit this calumny, I would 
direct her for conviction to the hero for whose gift alone 
she owes us an eternity of gratitude ; whom we have 
seen leading the \an of universal emancipation, decking 
his wreath with the flowers of every soil, and filling his 
army with the soldiers of every sect : before whose 
splendid dawn, e\evy tear exhaling and every vapour 
vanishing, the colours of the European world have re- 
■ !. and the spirit of European liberty (may no crime 
avert the omen !} seems to have arisen ! Suppose he was 
a Catholic, could this have been ? Suppose Catholics 
did not follow him, could this have been 2 Did the Ca- 
tholic Cortes inquire his faith when they gave him the 
supreme command ? Did the Regent of Portugal with- 



24 A SPEECH 

hold from his creed the reward of his valour ? Did the 
Catholic Soldier pause at Salamanca to dispute upon 
polemics ? Did the Catholic chieftain prove upon Bar- 
rossa that he kept no faith wi'h heretics, or did the creed 
of Spain, the same with that of Fran e, the opposite of 
that of England, prevent their association in the field of 
liherty ? Oh. no. no, nof the citizen of every clime, the 
friend of every color, and the child of every creed, liber- 
ty walks abroad in the ubiquity of her benevolence ; alike 
to her the varieties of faith and the vicissitudes of coun- 
try : she lias no object but the happiness of man. no 
bounds but the extremities of creation. Yes, yes, it was 
reserved for Wellington to redeem his own country when 
he was regenerating exevy other. It was reserved for 
him to show how vile were the aspersions on your creed, 
how generous were the glowings of your gratitude. Be 
was a Protestant, yet Catholics trusted him ; he was a 
Protestant, vet Catholics ad\anced him? he is a Pro- 
testant Knight in Catholic Portugal ; he is a Protestant 
Duk* 1 in Catholic Spain : he is a Protestant commander 
of Catholic armies : he is more, he is the living proof of 
the Catholic's liberality, and the undeniable refutation 
of the Protestant's injustice. Gentlemen, as a Protes- 
tant, though 1 may blush for the bigotry of many of my 
creed who continue obstinate in the teeth of this convic- 
tion, still were i a Catholic I should feel little triumph 
in the victory. I should only hang my head at the dis- 
tresses which this warfare occasioned to my country. I 
should only think how long she had writhed in the ago- 
ny of her disunion; how lung she bent, fettered by slaves, 
cajoled by blockheads, and plundered by adventurers ; 
the proverb of the fool, the prey of the politician, the 
dupe of the designing, the experiment of the desperate, 
struggling as it were between her own fanatical and in- 
fatuated parties, those hell engendered serpents which 
enfold her, like the Trojan seer, even at the worship of 
her altars, and crush her to death in the very embraces 
of her children! It is time (is it not ?) that she should 
be extricated. The act would be proud, the means 
would be Christian : mutual forbearance, mutual indul- 
gence, mutual concession : I would say to the Protes- 
tant, Concede : I would say to the Catholic, Forgive ; 
I ould sty to both. Though you bend not at the same 
shrine, you have a common God, and a common coun- 



AT CORK. 25 

try; the one has commanded love, the other kneels to 
for peace. This hostility of her sects has heen the 
ace, the peculiar disgrace, of Christianity. The 
Geutoo loves his cast, so does the Mahometan, so does 
the Hind to, whom England out of the abundance of her 
charity is about to teach her creed ; — I hope she may 
not teach her practice. But Christianity, Christianity 
alone exhibits her thousand sects, each denouncing his 
neighbor here, in the name or' God, and damning here- 
after out of pure devotion I *• You're a heretic, ° says tho 
Catholic : " You're a Papist," says the Protestant : 
" I apnea! to Saint Peter," ex laitns tho Catholic : I 
appeal to Saint Athaunsius," cries the Protestant : — 
•» and if it goes to damning, he's as good at it as any 
saint in the calendar. *' " You'll all be damned eternal- 
ly.'* moans out the Methodist ; I'm the elect \" Thus 
. you see, each has his anathema, his accusation, 
and his retort, and in tho end Religion is the victim ! 
The victory of each is the overthrow of all ; and Infide- 
lity, laughing at the contest, writes the refutation of 
their creed in the blood of the combatants ! 1 wonder 
if this reflection has ever struck any of those reverend 
dignitaries who rear their mitres against Catholic eman- 
cipation. Has it ever glanced across their Christian 
zed, if the story of our country should have casually 
reached the valleys of Hindostan, with what an argu- 
ment they are furnishing the heathen world against their 
sacred missionary ? In what terms could the Christian 
ecclesiastic answer the Eastern Bramin, when he repli- 
ed to his exhortations iu language such as this ? m Fa- 
ther, we have heard your doctrine; i<. is splendid in 
theory, specious in promise, sublime in prospect ; like 
the world to which it leads, it is rich in the mired 
light. But Father, we have heard that there are times 
when its rays vanish and leave your sphere in darkness, 
or when your only lustre arises from meteors of fire, and 
moons of blood ; we have heard of the verdant island 
which the Great Spirit has raised in the bosom of the 
waters with such a bloom of beauty, that the very wave 
she has usurped worships the loveliness of her intrusion. 
The sovereign of our forests is not more generous in his 
anger than her sons ; the snow-flake, ere it falls on the 
mountains, is not purer than her daughters ; little in- 
land seas reflect tho splendours of her landscape, and 



96 A SPEECH 

her valleys smile at the story of the serpent ! Father, 
is it true that tills isle of the sun, this people of the 
m mine:, find the fury of the ocean in your creed, and 
■lore than the venom of the viper in your policy ? Is it 
true that for six hundred years, her peasant has not tast- 
ed peace, nor her piety rested f'r-m persecution ? Oh! 
Brama, defend us from the God of the Christian ! Fa- 
ther, father, return to your brethren, retrace the wa- 
ters ; we may live in ignorance, but we live in love, and 
we will not taste the tree that gives us evil when it gives 
us wisdom. The heart is our guide, nature is our gos- 
pel ; in the imitation of our fathers we found our hope, 
and, if we err, on the virtue of our motives we reh for 
our redemption. " How would the missionaries of the 
mitre answer him ? How will they answer that insult- 
ed Being of whose creed their conduct cariies the refu- 
tation ? —But to what end do I argue with the Bigot l 
a wret< h, whom no philosophy can humanize, no chari- 
ty soften, no religion reclaim ; no miracle convert ; a 
monster, who, red with the fires of hell, and bending 
under the crimes of earth, erects his murderous divinity 
upon a throne of sculls, and would gladly feed even with 
a brother's blood the cannibal appetite of his rejected 
altar! His very interest cannot soften him into huma- 
nity. Surely, if it could, no man would be found mad 
enough to advocate a system which cankers the very 
heart of society, and undermines the natural resources 
of government ; which takes away the strongest excite- 
ment to industry, by closing up every avenue to lauda- 
ble ambition ; which administers to the vanity or the 
vice of a party, when it should only study the advan- 
tage of a people ; and holds out the perquisites of state 
as an impious bounty on the persecution of religion. — I 
ha\e already shown that the power of the Pope, that the 
power of Fiance, and that the tenets of your creed, were 
but imaginary auxiliaries to this system. Another pre- 
tended obsTaele has, however, been opposed to your e- 
mam ipation. 1 allude to the danger arising from a fo- 
reign influence. What a triumphant answer can you 
give to that! Methinks, as lately, 1 see the assemblage 
of your hallowed hierarchy surrounded by the priesthood, 
and I oil owed by the people, waving aloft the crucifix of 
Christ alike against the seductions of the court, and the 
commands of the conclave ! >Vas it nut a delightful, a 



AT CORK. 27 

heart-cheering spectacle, to see that holy band of bro. 
titers preferring the chance of martyrd >m to the cer- 
tainty of promotion, and postponing all the gratifica- 
tions of vvorldiy pride, to the severe but heaven-gaining 
glories of their poverty ? They acted honestly; and they 
acted wisely also ; for I say here, before the largest as- 
sembly I ever saw in any country — and I believe you 
are almost all Catholics— I say here, that if the see of 
Rome presumed to impose any temporal mandate direct- 
ly or indirectly on the Irish people, the Irish bishops 
should at once abandon it, or their flocks, one and all, 
would abjure and banish both of them together. History 
affords us too fatal an example of the perfidious, arro- 
gant, and venal interference of a papal usurper of for- 
mer days in the temporal jurisdiction of this count! y; 
an interference assumed without right, exercised with- 
out principle, a; d followed by calamities apparently 
without end. Thus, then, has every obstacle vanished; 
but it has done more — every obstacle has, as it were, by 
miracle, produced a powerful argument in your favor } 
How do I prove it ? Follow me in my proofs, and you 
will see by what links the chain is united. The power 
of Napoleon was the grand and leading obstacle to your 
emancipation. That power led him to the menace of an 
Irish invasion. What did that prove? Only the since- 
rity of Irish allegiance. On the very threat, we poured 
forth our volunteers, our yeoman, and our militia ; and 
the country became encircled with an armed and a loval 
population. Thus, then, the calumny of your disaffec- 
tion vanished. That power next led him to the invasion of 
Portugal. What did it prove ? Only the good faith of 
Catholic allegiance, £, very field in the Peninsula saw 
the Catholic Portuguese hail the English Protestant as 
a brother and a friend joined in the same pride and the 
sam J peril. Thus, then, vanished the slander that you 
could not keep fairh with heretics. That power next led 
him to the imprisonment of the Pontiff, so long suspect- 
ed of being quite ready to sacrifice every thing to his 
interest and his dominion. What did that prove? The 
strength of his principles, the purity of his faith, the 
disinterestedness ot his practice, it proved a life spent 
in the study of the saints, and ready to be closed by an 
imitation of the martyrs. Thus, also, was the head of 
your religion vindicated to Europe. There remained 



28 A SPEECH 

behind but one impediment — your liability to a fofcigft 
influence. Now mark ! The Pontiff's captivity led to the 
transmission of Quarantotli's rescript ; and, on its arri- 
val, from the priest to the peasant, there was not a Ca- 
tholic in the land, who did not spiirn the document of 
Italian audacity ! Thus, then, vanished also the phan- 
tom of a foreign influence! Is this comiction ? Is not 
the hand of God in it ? Oh yes | for observe what fol- 
lowed. The very moment that power, which was the 
first and last leading argument against you, had, by its 
special operation, banished every obstacle ; that power 
itself, as it were by enchantment, evaporated at once ; 
and peace with Europe took away the last pretence for 
your exclusion. Peace with Europe ! alas, there is no 
peace for Ireland : the universal pacification was hut the 
signal for renewed hostility to us» and the mockery of 
its preliminaries were tolled through our provinces by 
the knell of the curfew. I ask, is it not time that this 
hostility should cease ? If ever there was a day when it 
was necessary, that day undoubtedly exists no longer. 
The continent is triumphant, the Peninsula is free, 
France is our ally. The hapless house Which gave birth 
to Jacohitism is extinct for ever. The Pope has been 
found not only not hostile, but complying. Indeed, if 
England would recollect the share you had in these sub* 
lime events, the very recollection should subsidize her 
into gratitude. But should she not — should she, with a 
baseness monstrous and unparalleled, forget our ser- 
vices, she has still to study a tremendous lesson. The 
ancient order of Europe, it is true, is restored, but what 
restored it ? Coalition after coalition had crumbled a- 
way before the might of the conqueror ; crowns were 
but ephemeral ; monarchs only the tenants of an hour ; 
the descendant of Frederick dwindled into a vassal ; the 
heir of Peter shrunk into the recesses of his frozen de- 
sert ; the successor of Charles roamed a vagabond, not 
only throneless but houseless ; c\cry evening sun set up- 
on a change ; every morning dawned upon some new 
convulsion: in short, the whole political globe quhcred 
as with an earthquake, and who could tell what venera- 
ble monument was next to shiver beneath the splendid, 
frightful, and reposeless heavings of the French volca- 
no ! What gave Europe peace and England safety amid 
this palsy of her Princes ? Was it uot the Landwehr and 



AT CORK. 21 

the Landsturm and the Levy en Masse ? Was it not 
the People r— that first and last, and best and noblest, 
as well as safest security of a virtuous government. It 
is a glorious lesson ; she ought to study it in this hour 
of safely ; but should she not — 

M Oh wo be to the Prince who rules by fear, 
When danger comes upon him i" 

She will adopt it. I hope it from her wisdom \ I expect 
it from her policy ; I claim it, from her justice ; I de- 
mand it from her gratitude. She must at length see that 
there is a gross mistake in the management of Ireland. 
No wise man ever yet imagined injustice to be his inte- 
rest ; and the minister who thinks he serves a state hy 
upholding the most irritating and the most impious of all 
m -m molies, will one day or other find, hiinscii miserably 
mistaken. This system of persecution is uot the way to 
govern this country ; at least to govern it with any hap- 
piness to itself, or advantage to its rulers. Centuries 
have proved its total inefficiency, and if it be continued 
for centuries, the proofs will be but multiplied. Why, 
however, should, 1 blame the English people, when I 
see our own representatives so shamefully negligent of 
our interest ? The other day, for instance, when Mr. 
Peele introduced, aye, and passed too, his three newly 
invented penal bills, to the necessity of which, every as- 
sizes in Ireland, and as honest a judge as ever dignified 
or redeemed the ermine, has given the refutation ; why 
was it that no Irish member rose in his place to vindicate 
his country ? Where were the nominal representatives 
of Ireland ? Where were the renegade revilers of the de- 
magogue ? Where were the noisy proclaimers of the 
board ? What, was there not one voice to own the coun- 
try ? Was the patriot of 1782 an assenting auditor? 
Were our hundred itinerants mute and motionless— 
" quite chop- fallen ?" or is it only when Ireland is slan- 
dered and her motives misrepresented, and her oppres- 
sions are basely and falsely denied, that their venal 
throats are ready to echo the chorus of ministerial ca- 
lumny ? Oh, 1 should not have to ask those questions, if 
in the late contest for this city, you had prevailed, and 
sent Hutchinson into Parliament : he would have ri- 
sen, though alone, as I have often seen him — richer not 



SO A SPEECH AT CORK. 

less in hereditary fame, than in personal accomplish- 
ments ; the ornament of Ireland as she is, the solitary 
remnant of what she was. If slander dare asperse her, 
it would not have done so with impunity. He would 
have encouraged the timid ; he would have shamed the 
recreant; and though he ; could -not have saved Ut> from 
chains, he would at least have shielded us from calum- 
ny. Let me hope that his absence shall he hut of short 
duration, and that this city will earn an additional claim 
to the gratitude of the country, hy electing him her re- 
presentative. I scarcely know him but as a public man, 
and considering the state to which we are reduced by the 
apostacy of some, and the ingratitude of others, and ve- 
nality of more, — I say you should inscribe the conduct 
of such a man in the manuals of your devotion, and in the 
primers of your children, but of a.11, you should act on 
\t yourselves. Let me entreat of you, above all things, 
to sacrifice any personal differences amongst yourselves, 
for the great cause in which you are embarked. Remem- 
ber, the contest is for your children, your Country, and 
your God ; and remember also, that the day of Irish 
union will be the natal day of Irish liberty. When your 
own Parliament, (which i trust in Heaven we ma> yet 
see again) voted you the right of franchise, and the light 
of purchase, it gave you, if you are not false to your- 
selves, a certainty of your emancipation, flt) friends, 
farewell ! this has been a most unexpected meeting to 
me ; it has been our first, it may be our last. I can ne- 
ver forget the enthusiasm of this reception. I am too 
much affected by it to make professions; but believe me, 
no matter where I may be driven by the whim of my 
destiny, you shall find me one in whom change of place 
shall create no change of principle ; one whose memory 
must perish ere he forgets his country ; vi hose heart 
must be cold when it beats not for her happiness. 



a gratis 



DELIVERED AT 



AN AGGREGATE MEETING 



OF 



€Se Soman €at§oiic£ of ©ufitin- 



Having taken, in the discussions on your question, 
such humble share as was allotted to my station and ca- 
pacity, I may be permitted to offer my ardent congratu- 
lations at the proud pinnacle on which it this day repo- 
ses. After having combated calumnies the most atro- 
cious, sophistries the most plausible, and perils the most 
appalling, that slander could invent, or ingenuity could 
devise, or power array against you, I at length behold 
the assembled rank and wealth and talent of the Catho- 
lic body offering to the legislature that appeal which can- 
not be rejected, if there be a power in heaven to redress 
injury, or a spirit on earth to administer justice. No 
matter what may be the depreciations of faction or of bi- 
gotry ; this earth never presented a more ennobling 
spectacle than that of a Christian country suffering for 
her religion with the patience of a martyr, and suing 
for her liberties with the expostulations of a philosopher ; 
reclaiming the bad by her piety ; refuting the bigoted 
by her practice ; wielding the Apostle's weapons in the 
patriot's cause, and at length, laden with chains and 
with laurels, seeking from the country she had saved the 
Constitution she had shielded ! Little did i imagine, 



S* A SPEECH 

ttiat in such a state of your cause, wo should be called 
together to counteract the impediments to its success, 
created not by its enemies, but by those supposed to be 
its friends. It is a melancholy occasion ; but me- 
lancholy as it is, it must be met, and met with the 
fortitude of men struggling in the sacred cause of 
liberty. I do not allude to the proclamation of 
your Board ; of that Board I never was a mem- 
ber ; so I can speak impartially. It contained much ta- 
lent, some learning, many virtues. It was valuable on 
that account ; but it was doubly valuable as being a ve- 
hicle tor the individual sentiments of any Catholic, and 
for the aggregate sentiments of every Catholic. T =ose 
who seceded from it. do not remember that, individual- 
ly, they are nothing ; that as a body, they are every 
thing. It is not this wealthy slave, or that titled syco- 
phant, whom the bigots dread, or the parliament re- 
spects ! No, it is the body, the numbers, the rank, the 
property, the genius, the perseverance, the education, 
but, above all, the Union of the Catholics. I am far 
from defending every measure of the Board — perhaps I 
condemn some of its measures even more than those who 
have seceded from it ; but is it a reason, if a general 
makes one mistake, that his followers are to desert him, 
esuecially when the contest is for all that is dear or va- 
luable ? No doubt the Board had its errors. Show me 
the human institution which has not. Let the man, then, 
who denounces it, prove himself superior to humanity, 
before he triumphs in his accusation. I am sorry for its 
suppression. When I consider the animals who are in 
ofrVe around us, the act does not surprise me ; but I 
confess, even from them, the manner did, and the time 
chosen did, most sensibly. I did not expect it on the 
very hour when the news of universal peace was fust 
promulgated, and on the anniversary of the only British 
monarch*!? birth* who ever gave a boon to this distract- 
ed country. 

You will excuse this digresssion, rendered indeed in 
some degree necessary. I shall now confine myself ex- 
clusively to your resolution, which determines on the 
immediate presentation of your petition, and censures 
the neglect of any discussion on ir by your advocates du- 
ring the last session of parliament. You have a right 
to demand most fully the reasons of any man who dis- 



AT DT/BLIff. S3 

sents from Mr. Grattan. I will give you mine explicit- 
ly. But C shall first state the reasons which he has gi- 
ven for the postponement of your question. I shall do so 
out of respect to him, if indeed it can be called respect 
to quote those sentiments, which on their very mention 
must excite your ridicule. Mr. Grattan presented your 
petition, and, on m >ving that it should lie where so ma- 
ny preceding ones have lain, namely, on the table* he de- 
clared it to be his intention to move for no discussion.— 
Here, in the first place, I think Mr. Grattan wrong; he 
got that petition, if not on the express, at least on the 
implied condition of having it immediately discussed. — 
There was not a man at the aggregate meeting at which 
it was adopted^ who did not expect a discussion on the 
very first opportunity. Mr. Grattan, however, was an- 
gry at " suggestions." I do not think Mr. Grattan, of 
all men, had any right to be so angry at receiving that 
which every English member was willing to receive, and 
was actually receiving from any English corn-factor. 
Mr. Grattan was also angry at " our violence." Nei- 
ther do I tliiffk he had any occasion to be so squeamish 
at what he calls our violence. There was a day, when 
Mr. Gratfean would not have spurned our suggestions, 
and there was also a day when he was fifty-fold more in- 
temperate than any of his oppressed countrymen, whom 
he now holds up to the English people as so unconstitu- 
tionally violent. A pretty way forsooth, fv»r your advo- 
cate to commence conciliating a foreign auditory in fa- 
vour of your petition. Mr. Grattan, however, has ful- 
filled his own prophecy, that « an oak of the forest is 
too old to be transplanted at fifty," and our fears that 
an Irish native would soon lose its raciness in an English 
atmosphere. " It is not my intention," says he, " to 
move for a discussion at present." Why? " Great ob- 
stacles have heen removed." That's his first reason. 
" I am, however," says he, « still ardent." Ardent! 
Why it strikes me to be a very novel kind of ardour, 
which toils till it has removed every impediment, and 
then pauses at the prospect of its victory ! " And I am 
of opinion," lie continues, « that any immediate discus- 
sion would be the height, of precipitation :" that is, after 
having removed the impediments, he pauses in his path, 
declaring he is " ardent ." and after centuries of suf- 
fering, when you press for a discussion, he protests that 



34 A SPEECH 

he considers von monstrously precipitate ! "Now is not 
a fair translation ? VY by, really if we did not know 
>Ir. Grattan, we should be aimost tempted to think that 
he v*as quoting from the ministry. With the exception 
of one or two plain, downright, sturdy, unblushing bi- 
Sot*. who opposed you because you were Christinns, 
and declared they did so, this was the cant of evry man 
who affected liberality. •' Oh. I declare." they say, 
" thev may not be cannibals, though they are Catholics, 
and I would be verv glad to vote for them, but this is no 
timer " Oh, no."*says Bragge Bathurst, " it's no time. 
What, in time of war! Why it looks like bullying us !" 
Verv well: next com*>s the peace, and what say our 
friends the Opposition ? «< Oh ! I declare peace is no 
*time, it looks so like persuading us." For my part, se- 
rious as the subject is. it affects me with the very same 
ridicule with which I see I have so unconsciously affect- 
ed vou 1 will tell vou a Story of which it reminds me. 
It is told of the celebrated Charles Fox. Far be it from 
me. however, to mention, that name with levity. As he 
wa* a great man, I revere him : As he was a good man, 
I love him. He had as wise a head as e\er paused to 
deliberate ; he had as sweet a tongue as ever gave the 
words of wisdom utterance . and he had a heart so 
stained with the immediate impress of the Divinity, that 
its verv errors mielit be traced to the excess of its bene- 
volence. I had almost forgot the story. Fox was a man 
n f peniifs— of course he was poor. Poverty is a reproach 
fn no man : to such a man as Fox, I think it was a pride; 
for iffte chose to traffic with his principles ; il he chose 
le with his conscience, how easy might behave 
rich ? I guessed vour answer. It would have been 
1 if you did not believe that in England talents might 
find a purchased, who have seen in Ireland bow easily a 
blockhead ai swindle himself into preferment. Juvenal 
say* that the greatest misfortune attendant upon poverty- 
is 'ridicule. Fox found out a great v-deht The Jews 
called on him ^r payment. « Ah. my dear friends, 
sav, Fox, >< I admit the principle? I owe you money, 
but what time is this, when 1 am going upon business/ 
Just so our friends admit the principle : they owe you 
emancipation, but wars no time. Well, the Jews de- 
„ar1(d just as you did. They returned to the charge : 
u What i (cries Fox) is this a time, when I am engaged 



AT DUBLIN. Zb 

on an appointment V 9 What ! say oar friends, is this a 
time when all the world's at peace ? The Jews depart- 
ed ; but the end of it w as, Fox, with his secretary, Mr. 
Hare, who was as much in debt as he was, shut themselves 
up in garrison. The Jews used to surround his hahita 
tion at day-light, and poor Fox regularly put his head 
out of the window, with this question, " Gentlemen, are 
you Fox-hunting, or Bare hunting this morning ?" His 
pleasantry mitigated the very Jews. " Well, well, Fox, 
now you have always admitted the principle, hut protest- 
ed against the time — Ave will give you your own time, 
only just fix some final day for our repayment. , *' <• Ah, 
nay dear Moses," replies Fox, u now this is friendly. 
1 will take you at your word ; I will fix a day, and as 
as it's to he &fnal day, what would vou think of the day 
of judgment ?" — " That will he too husy a day with us." 
" Well, well, in order to accommodate all parties, let 
us settle the day after.'* Thus it is, hetween the war in- 
expediency of Bragge Bathurst, and the peace inexpe- 
diency of Mr. G rat tat*, you may expert your emancipa- 
tion hill pretty much ahout the time that Fox settled for 
the payment of his creditors. Mr. Grattan, however, 
though he scorned to take your suggestions, took the 
suggestions of your friends. " 1 have consulted," says 
he, " my right honorable friends !" Oh, all, friends, 
all right honorable I Now this it is to trust the interests 
of a people into the hands of a party. You must know, 
in parliamentary parlance, thesp right honorable friends 
mean a party. There are few men so contemptible as 
not 1 1 have a partv. The minister has his party. The 
opposition have their party. The Saints, for there are 
Saints in the House of Commons, Incus a non lucendo, — 
the saints have their party. Every one has his party. 
I had forgotten — It eland has no party. Such are the 
reasons if reasons they can he called, which Mr. Grat- 
tan has given for the postponement of your question; 
and 1 sincerely say, if they had come from any other 
man, I would not have condescended to have given 
them an answer. He is indeed reported to have said 
that he had others in reserve, which he did not think it 
necessary to detail. If those which he reserved were 
like those which he delivered, 1 do not dispute the pru- 
dence of his keeping them to himself; but as we have 
not the gift of prophecy, it is not easy for us to answer 



56 A SPEECH 

them, until lie shall deign to give them to his consti- 
tuents. 

Having dealt thus freely with the alleged reasons for 
the postponement, it is quite natural that you should re- 
quire what my reasons are for urging the discussion. I 
shall give them candidly. They are at once so sin pie 
and explicit, it is quite impossible that the meanest ca- 
pacity amongst you should not comprehend them. I 
would urge the instant discussion, because, discussion 
ha* always been of use to you : because, upon every dis- 
cussion you have gained converts out of doors; and be- 
cause, upon every discussion within the doors of parlia- 
ment, your enemies have diminished, and your friends 
ha- e increased. Now, is not that a strong reason for 
continuing your discussions ? This ma} he assertion. 
Aye, but I will prove it. in order to ronvime v ou of 
the argument as referring to the country, 1 need hut 
point to the state of the public mind now upon the sub- 
ject, and tbst which existed in the memory of the young- 
est. 1 myself remember the blackest and the basest uni- 
versal denunciations against your cieed, and the vilest 
anathemas against any man who would grant you an iota. 
•Vow, every man affects to be liberal, and theonh ques- 
tion with some is the time of the concessions : with others, 
the ex r ent of the concessions ; with man;,, the nature of 
the securities vou should afford ; whilst a great multi- 
tude, in which I am proud to class myself, think that 
your emancipation should be immediate, universal, and 
unrestricted. Such has been the progress of the human 
mind out of doors , in consequence of the powerful elo- 
quence, argument, and policy elicited by those discus- 
sions which your friends now have, for the first time, 
found out to be precipitate. Now let us see what has 
been the effect produced within the doors nf Parliament. 
For twenty years you were silent, and of course you 
were neglected. The consequence was most natural. — 
Why should Parliament grant privileges to men who did 
not think those privileges worth the solicitation ? Then 
rose your agitators, as they are called by those bigots 
who are trembling at the effect of their arguments on the 
community, and who, as a matter of course, take Qx^vy 
opportunity of calumniating them. Ever since that pe- 
riod your cause has been advancing. Take the nume- 
rical proportions in the House of Commons on each sub- 



AT DUBLIN. Sr 

sequent discussion. In 1805, the first time it was brought 
forward in the Imperial legislature, and it was then aid- 
ed by the powerful eloquence of Fox, there was a majo- 
rity against even taking your claims into consideration, 
of no less a number than 212. It was an appalling 
omen. In 1808, however, on the next discussion, that 
majority was diminished to 163. In 1810 it decreased 
to 104. In 1811 it dwindled to 64, and at length in 
1812, on the motion of Mr. Canning, and it is not a lit- 
tle remarkable that ihe first successful exertion in your 
favor was made by an English member, your enemies 
fled the fi^ld, and you had the triumphant majority to 
support you ef 129 ! Now, is not this demonstration ? 
What becomes new of those who say discussion lias not 
been of use. to vou ? But I need not have resorted to 
arithmetical calculation, Men become ashamed of com- 
bating with axioms. Truth is omnipotent, and must 
prevail ; it forces its way with the fire and the precis ion 
of the morning sun beam. Vapours mn\ impede the in- 
fancy of its progress ; but the very resistance that would 
check only condenses and concentrates it, until at length 
it goes forth in the fulness of its meridian, all life and 
light and lustte — the mirfutest objects visible in its reful- 
gence. You lived for centuries on the vegetable diet and 
eloquent silence of this Pythagorean polity ; and the con. 
sequence was, when you thought yours* Ives mightily 
dignified, and mightily interesting, the whole world was 
laughing at your philosophy, and sending its aliens to 
take possession of your birth-right. 1 havegiwn you a 
good reason for urging your discussion, by having shown 
you that discussion lias always gained you proselytes. 
But is it the time ? says Mr. Grattan. Yes, Sir, it is 
ihe time, peculiarly the time, unless indeed the great 
question of Irish liberty is to be reserved as a weapon in 
the hands of a party to wield against the weakness of the 
Biicish minister. liut why should 1 delude you by talk- 
ing about time ! Oh ! there will never be a time with 
Bigotry ! She has no head, and cannot think ; she 
has no heart, and cannot feel ; when she moves, it is in 
wrath; when she pauses, it is amid ruin; her prayers 
are curses, her communion is death, her vengeance is 
eternity, her decaloguo is written in the blood of her 
victims ; and if she stoops for a moment from her infer- 
nal flight, it is upon som« kindred rock to whet her th!« 



S8 A. SPEECH 

ture fang for keener rapine, and replume her wing for n 
more sanguinary desolation ! I appeal from this infer- 
nal, gravestajled, fury. 1 appeal to the good sense, to 
tke policy, to the gratitude of England ; and 1 make my 
; ,1 peculiarly at this moment, when all the illustri- 
potentates of Enrop* arc assembled Together in the 
sh capital, to hold the great festival of universal 
d universal emancipation. Perhaps when France, 
ted with success, fired by ambition, and infuriated 
b\ enmity ; her avowed aim an universal conquest, her 
means the confederated resources of the Continent, her 
guide the greatest military genius a nation fertile in pro- 
digies has produced — a man who seemed born to invest 
what had been regular, to defile what had been venera- 
ble, to crush what had been established, and to create, as 
if by a magic impulse, a fairy world, peopled by the 
paupers he had commanded into kings, and based by the 
thrones he had crumbled in his caprices— -perhaps when 
a power, soled, so organised, and so incited * was 
in it; noon of triumph, the timid might tiemble even at 
the charge that would save, or the concession that would 
Strengthen. But now. — her allies faithless, her con- 
quests despoiled, herterritory dismembered, her legions 
defeated, herleader dethroned, and her reigning prince 
our ally by treaty, our debtor by gratitude, and our 
alienable friend by every solemn obligation of civilized 
society, — the objection i* our strength, and the obstacle 
our battlement. Perhaps when the Pope was in the pow- 
er of our enemy, however slender the pretext, bigotry 
might have rested on it. The inference was false as 
to Ireland, and it was ungenerous as to Rome. Toe 
Irish Catholic, firm in his faith, bows to the pontiff's 
spiritual supremacy, but he would spurn the pontiff's 
temporal interference. If. with the spirit of an earthly 
domination, he were to issue to morrow his despotic 
mandate, Catholic Ireland with one voice would answer 
him : " Sire, we bow with reverence to your spiritual 
mission: the descendant of Saint Peter, we freely ac- 
knowledge you the head of our church, and the organ of 
our creed -."but. Sire, if we have a church, we cannot 
forget that we also have a country : and when yon at- 
tempt to convert your mitre into a crown, and youi < ro- 
zier into a sceptre*, you degrade the majesty of your I igh 
delegation, and grossly miscalculate upon our acquies- 



AT DUBXI2T. 59 

sence. No foreign power shall regulate the allegiance 
which we owe to our sovereign ; it was the fault of our 
fathers that one Pope forged our fetters ; it will he our 
own, if we allow them to he rivetted by another." Such 
would be the answer of universal Ireland ; surh was her 
answer to the audacious menial, who dared to dictate 
her unconditional submission to an art of Parliament 
which emancipated by penalties, and redressed by insult. 
But, Sir, it never would have entered into the contem- 
plation of the Pope to have assumed such an authority. 
His character was a sufficient shield against the imputa- 
tion, and his policy must have taught him, that, in 
grasping at the shadow of a temporal power, he should 
but risk the reality of his ecclesiastical supremacy. Thus 
was Parliament doubly guarded against a foreign usur- 
pation. The people upon whom it was to act deprecate 
its authority, and the power to which it was imputed 
abhors its ambition ; the Pope would not exert it if he 
could, and the people would not obey it if he did. Just 
precisely upon the same foundation rested the aspersions 
which were cast upon your creed. How did experience 
justify them ? Did Lord Wellington find that religious 
faith made any difference amid the thunder ol the battle ? 
Bid the Spanish soldier desert his colours because his 
general believed not in the real presence ? Did the brave 
Portuguese neglect his orders to negotiate about myste- 
ries ? Or what comparison did the hero draw between 
the policy of England and the piety of Spain* when at 
one moment he led the heterodox legions to victory, and 
the very next was obliged to fly from his own native 
flag, waving defiance on the walls of Burgos, where the 
Irish exile planted and sustained it 2 What must he have 
felt when in a foreign land he was obliged to command 
brother against brother, to raise the sword of blood, and 
drown the cries of nature with the artillery of death ? 
What were the sensations of our hapless exiles, when 
they recognized the features of their long-lost country? 
when they heard the accents of the tongue they loved, 
or caught the cadence of the simple melody which once 
lulled them to sleep within a mother's arms, and cheer- 
ed the darling circle they must behold no more I Alas, 
how the poor banished heart delights in the memory (hat 
song associates ! He heard it in iiappier days, when 
the parents he adored, the maid he loved, the friends of 



40 x SPEECH 

his soul, and the green fields of his infancy were round 
him ; when his labors were illumined with the sun-shine 
of the heart, and his humble hut was a palace — for it 
was home. His soul is lull, his eye suffused, he bends 
from the battlements to catch the cadence, when his 
dead shot, sped by a brother's hand, lays him in his 
grave — the victim of a code calling itself Christian ! 
Who shall say, heart-rending as it is, this picture is 
from fancy ? Has it not occurred in Spain ? May it not, 
a,t this instant, be acting in America ? Is there any 
country in the universe, in which these brave exiles of a 
barbarous bigotry are not to be found refuting the ca- 
lumnies that banished and rewarding the hospitality that 
received them ? Yet England, enlightened England, 
who sees them in every field of the old world and the 
new, defending the various flags of every faith, supports 
the injustice of her exclusive constitution, by branding 
upon them the uugenerous accusation of an exclusive 
creed ! England, the ally of Catholic Portugal, the al- 
ly of Catholic Spain, the ally of Catholic France, the 
friend of the Pope ! England, who seated a Catholic 
bigot in Madrid ! who convoyed a Catholic Braganza 
to the Brazils ! who enthroned a Catholic Bourbon in 
Pans ! who guaranteed a Catholic establishment in Ca- 
nada ! who gave a constitution to Catholic Hanover ! 
England, who searches the globe for Catholic grievan- 
ces to redress, and Catholic Princes to restore, will not; 
trust the Catholic at home, who spends his blood and 
treasure in her service ! ! Is this generous ? Is this con- 
sistent ? Is it just? Is it even politic ? Is it the act of a 
wise country to fetter the energies of an entire popula- 
tion ? (s it the act of a Christian country to do it in the 
name of God ? Is it politic in a government to degrade 
part of the body by which it is supported, or pi-ms to 
make Providence a party to their degradation ? 

There are societies in England for discountenancing 
rice ; there are Christian associations for distributing 
the Bible ; there are volunteer missions for converting 
the heathen : but Ireland, the seat of their government, 
the stay of their empire, their associate by all the tics of 
nature and of interest ; how has she benefited by the 
Gospel of which they boast ? Has the sweet spirit of 
Christianity appeared on our plains in the character of 
her precepts, breathing the air and robed in the beauties 



AT DUBLIN. 4t 

of the world to which she would lead us ; with no argu- 
ment but love, no look but peace, no wealth but piety ; 
her creed comprehensive as the arch of heaven, and her 
charities bounded but by the circle of creation ? Or has 
shebeen let loose amongst us, in form a fury, and in 
acta demon, her heart festered with the fires of hell, 
her hands clotted with the gore ©f earth, withering alike 
in her repose and in her progress, her path apparent by 
the print of blood, and her pause denoted by the ex- 
panse of desolation ? Gospel of Heaven ! is this thy he- 
rald ? God of the universe! is this thy hat d-maid ? 
Christian of the ascendancy ! how would you answer the 
disbelieving infidel, if he asked you, should he estimate 
the Christian doctrine by the Christian practice ; if he 
dwelt upon those periods when the human victim writhed 
upon the altar of the peaceful Jesus, and the cross, crim- 
soned with his blood, became little better than a stake 
to the sacrifice of his votaries ; if he pointed to Ireland, 
where the word of peace was the war-whoop of destruc- 
tion ; where the son was bribed against the father, and th& 
plunder of the parent's property was made a bounty on 
the recantation of the parent's creed; where the march 
of the human mind was stayed in his name, who had in- 
spired it with his reason, and any effort to liberate a 
fellow-creature from his intellectual bondage was sure to 
be recompensed by the dungeon or the scaffold ; where 
ignorance was so long a legislative command, and piety 
a legislative crime ,• where religion was placed as a bar- 
rier between the sexes, and the intercourse of nature 
was p onounced felony by law; where God's worship 
was an act of stealth, and his ministers sought amongst 
the savages of the woods that sanctuary which a nomi- 
nal civilization had denied them ; where at this instant 
conscience is made to blast e\ery hope of genius, ar.d 
every energy of ambition, and the Catholic who would 
rise to any station of trust, must, in the face of his 
country, deny the faith of his fathers ; where the pre- 
ferments of earth are only to be obtained by the forfei- 
ture of Heaven ? 

" Unprized are her sons till they learn to betray, 
Undistinguish'd the\ live it tbey shan e not their sires; 
And the torch that would light them to dignity's way, 
Mu«t be caught from the pile where their country expires ! ,; 



42 A SPEECH 

How, let me ask. how would the Christian zealot droop 
beneath this catalogue of Christian qualifications? But, 
thus it is, when sectarians differ on account of myste- 
ries : in the heat and acrimony of the causeless contest, 
religion, the glory of one world, and the guide of ano- 
ther, drifts from the splendid circle in which she shone, 
in the comet-maze of unrertainty and error. The code, 
again »t which you petition, is a vile compound of impi- 
ety and impolicy : impiety, because it debases in the 
name of God ; impolicy, because it disqualifies under 
pretence of government. Ff we are to argue from the 
services of Protestant Ireland, to the losses sustained by 
the bondage of Catholic Ireland, and I do not see why 
we should not, the state which continues such a system 
is guilty of little less than a political suicide. It matters 
little where the Protestant Irishman has been employed ; 
whether with Burke wielding the Senate with his elo- 
quence, with Castlereagh guiding the cabinet by his; 
counsels, with Barry enriching the arts by his pencil, 
with Swift adorning literature by his genius, with Gold- 
smith or with Moore softening the heart by their melo- 
dy, or with Wellington chaining victory at his car, he 
may boldly challenge the competition of the world. Op- 
pressed and impoverished as our country is, every muse 
lias cheered, and every art adorned, and every conquest 
crowned her. Plundered, she was not poor, for her cha- 
racter enriched ; attainted, she was not titleless, for her 
services ennobled ; literally outlawed into eminence and 
fettered into fame, the fields of her exile were immor- 
talized by her deeds, and the links of her chain became 
decorated by her laurels. Is this fancy, or is it fact I 
Is there a department in the state in which Irish genius 
does not possess a predominance? Is there a conquest 
which it does not achieve, or a dignity which it does not 
adorn ? At this instant, is there a country in the world 
to which England has not deputed an Irishman as her re- 
presentative ? She has sent Lord Moira to India, Sir 
Gore Ouseley to Ispahan, Lord Stuart to Vienna, Lord 
Castlereagh to Congress, Sir Henry Wellesley to Ma- 
drid, Mr. Canning to Lisbon, Lord Strangford to the 
Brazils. Lord Clancarty to Holland, Lord Wellington 
to Paris — all Irishmen ! Whether it results from acci- 
dent or from merit, can there be a more cutting sarcasm 
on the policy of England ! Is it not directly saying to 



AT DUBLIN. 43 

her, " Here is a country from one fifth of whose people 
you depute the agents of your most august dehgation, 
the remaining four-fifths of whi< h by your odious bigo- 
try, you incapacitate from any station of office or of 
trust !" It is adding all that is weak in impolicy to all 
that is wicked in ingratitude. What is her apology ? 
Mill she pretend that the Deity imitates her injustice, 
aud incapacitates the intellect as she has done the creed ? 
After making Providence a pretence for her code, will 
she also make it a party to her crime, and arraign the 
universal spirit of partiality in his dispensations ? Js 
she no! content with Hun as a Protestant God, unless 
he also consents to become a Catholic demon ? But, if 
the charge were crue, if the Irish Catholic were im uni- 
ted and debased, Ireland's conviction would be England's 
crime, and your answer to the bigot's charge should be 
the bigot's conduct. What, then ! is this the result of 
six centuries of your government ? Is this the connex- 
ion which you called a benefit to Ireland ? Have your 
protecting law r s so debased them, that the very pri- 
vilege of reason is worthless in their possession ? Shame ! 
oh, shame! to the go\ eminent where the people are 
barbarous ? The day is not distant when the) made the 
education of a Catholic a crime, and yet they arraign 
the Catholic for ignorance ! The day is not distant 
when they proclaimed the celebration of the Catholic 
worship a felony, and yet they complain that the Catho- 
lic is not moral ! What folly ! Is it to be expected that 
the people are to emerge in a moment from the stupor of 
a protracted degradation ? There is not perhaps to be 
traced upon the map of national misfortune a spot so tru- 
ly and so tediously deplorable as Ireland. Other lands, 
no doubt, have had their calamities. To the horrors of 
revolution, the miseries of despotism, the scourges of 
anarchy, they have in their turns been subject. But it 
has been only in their turns ; the visitations of wo, 
though severe, has not been eternal ; the hour of proba- 
tion, or of punishment, has passed away ; and the tem- 
pest, after having emptied the vial of its w rath, has gi- 
ven place to the serenity of the calm and of the sunshine. 
Has this been the case with respect to our miserable 
country ? Is there, save in the visionary world of tra- 
dition — is there in the progress, either of record or re- 
collection, one verdant spot in the desart of our annals 



44 A SPEECH 

where patriotism can find repose, or philanthropy re- 
freshment ? Oh. indeed, posterity will pause with won- 
der on the melancholy page which shall pourtray the sto- 
ry of a people amongst whom the policy of man has wa- 
ged an eternal warfare with the providence of God, 
blighting into deformity all that was beauteous, and into 
(amine all that wa9 abundant. I repeat however, the 
charge to be false. The Catholic mind in Ireland has 
made advances scarcely to be hoped in the short interval 
of its partial emancipation. But what encouragement 
has the Catholic parent to educate his offspring ? Sup- 
pose he sends bis son, the hope of his pride and the 
wealth of his heart, into the army ; the child justifies 
his parental anticipation; lie is moral in his habits, ho 
is strict in his discipline, he is daring in the field, and 
temperate at the board, and patient in the camp ; the 
first in the charge, the la«t in the retreat ; with an hand 
to achieve, and an head to guide, and a temper to con- 
ciliate : he combines the skill of Wellington with the 
clemency of Caesar and the courage of Turenne— yet he 
can never rise — he is a Catholic I — Take another in- 
stance. Suppose him at the bar. He has spent his 
nights at the lamp, and his days in the forum ; the rose 
has withered from his cheek mid the drudgery of form ; 
the spirit has fainted in his heart mid the analysis of 
crime ; he has foregone the pleasures of his youth, and 
the associates of his heart, and all the fairy enchant- 
ments in which fancy may have wrapped him. Alas! 
for what ? Though genius flashed from his eye, and 
eloquence rolled from his lips: though lie spoke with the 
tongue of Tully, and argued with the learning of Coke, 
and thought with the purity of Fletcher, he can never 
rise — he is a Catholic ! Merciful God ! what a state of 
society is this, in which thy worship is interposed as a 
disqualification upon thy providence ! Behold, in a word, 
the effects of the code against which you petition; it 
disheartens exertion, it disqualifies merit, it debilitates 
the state, it degrades the Godhead, it disobeys Christi- 
anity, it makes religion an article of traffic, and its 
founder a monopoly ; and for ages it has reduced a 
country, blessed with every beauty of nature and every 
bounty of Providence, to a state unparalleled under any 
ronstitution professing to be free, or any government 
pretending to be civilized. To justify this enormity, 



AT DUBLIN. 45 

there is now no argument. Now is the time to concede 
with dignity that which was never denied without injus- 
tice. Who cat) tell how soon we may require all the 
zeal of our united population to secure our very exis- 
tence ? W ho can argue upon the continuance of this 
calm ? Have we not seen the labour of ages overthrown, 
and the whim of a day erected on its ruins; establish- 
ments the most solid withering at a word, and visions the 
most whimsical realized at a wish ; crowns crumbled, 
discords confederated, kings become vagabonds, and va- 
gabonds made kings at the capricious phrenzy of a vil- 
lage adventurer ? Have we not seen the whole political 
and moral world shaking as with an earthquake, and 
shapes the most fantastic ai-d formidable and frightful 
heaved into life by the quiverings of the convulsion ? — 
The storm has passed over us; England has survived 
it; if she is wise, her present prosperity will be but the 
handmaid to her justice : if she is pious, the peril she 
has escaped will be but the herald of her expiation. Thus 
much have I said in the way of argument to the enemies 
of your question. Let roe offer an humble opinion to its 
friends. '] he first and almost the sole request which an 
advocate would make to )ou is, to remain united ; rely 
on it, a divided assault can never overcome a consolida- 
ted resistance. I allow that an educated aristocracy are 
as a head to the people, without which they cannot think : 
but then the people are as hands to the aristocracy, with- 
out which it cannot act. Concede, then, a little to even 
each other's prejudices ; recollect that individual sacri- 
fice is universal strength ; and can there be a nobler al- 
tar than the altar of your country ? This same spirit of 
conciliation should be extended even to your enemies. — 
If England will not consider that a brow of suspi< ion is 
but a bad accompaniment to an act of grace ; if she will 
not allow that kindness may make those friends whom 
e\ en oppression (ould not n ake foes; if she will not 
confess that the best security she can have from Ireland is 
b> ghing Ireland an interest in her constitution; still, 
since her power is the shield of her prejudices, y u 
should concede wheie vou cannot conquer ; it is wisdom 
to yield when it has become hopeless to combat. 

There is but one concession which 1 would never ad- 
vise, and which, were J a Catholic, 1 would never make. 
You will perceive that 1 allude to any interfereuce with 



46 A SPEECH 

your clergy. That was the crime of Mr. Grattan's se- 
curity bil'. It made the patronage of your religion the 
ransom for your liberties, and bought the favour of thG 
crown by the surrender of the church. It is a vicious 
principle, it is the cause of all your sorrows. If there 
had not been a state establishment, there would not have 
been a Catholic bondage. By that incestuous conspira- 
cy between the altar and the throne, infidelity has 
achieved a more extended dominion than by all the so- 
phisms of her philosophy, or all the terrors of her per- 
secution. It makes God's apostle a court-appendage, 
and God himself a court-purveyor ; it carves the cross 
into a chair of state, where, with grace on his brow and 
gold in his hand, the little perishable puppet of this 
world's vanity makes Omnipotence a menial to its pow- 
er, and Eternity a pander to its profits. Be not a party 
to it. As you have spurned the temporal interference of 
the Pope, resist the spiritual jurisdiction of the crown. 
As I do not think that you, on the one hand, could sur- 
render the patronage of your religion to the King, with- 
out the most unconscientious compromise, so, on the 
other hand, I do not think that the King could ever con- 
sciensciously receive it. Suppose he receives it; if he 
exen ises it for the advantage of your church, he direct- 
ly violates the coronation-oath which binds him to the 
exclusive interests ofthe Church of England ; and if he 
does not intend to exercise it for your advantage, to 
what purpose does he require from you its surrender ? 
But what pretence has England for this interference with 
your religion ? It was the religion of her most glorious 
era, it was the religion of her most ennobled patriots, it 
was the religion ofthe wisdom that framed her constitu- 
tion, it was the religion of the valour that achieved it, it 
would have been to this day the religion of her empire 
had it not been for the law less lust of a murderous adul- 
terer. What right has she to suspect your church ? — 
When her thousand sects were brandishing the frag- 
ments of their faith against each other, and Christ saw 
his garment, without a seam, a piece of patchwork for 
every mountebank who figured in the pantomime; when 
her Babel temple rocked at every breath of her Priest- 
leys and her Paynes, Ireland, proof against the menace 
of her power, was proof also against tin perilous impie- 
ty of her example. But if as Catholics you should 



AT DUBXIW. 47 

guard it, the palladium of your creed, not less as Irish- 
men should you prize it, the relic of your country. De- 
luge after deluge has desolated her provinces. The mo- 
numents of art which escaped the barbarism of one inva- 
der fell beneath the still more savage civilization of ano- 
ther. Alone, amid the solitude, your temple stood like 
some majestie monument amid the desert of antiquity, 
just in its proportions, sublime in its associations, rich in 
the virtue of its saints, cemented by the blood of its mar- 
tyrs, pouring forth for ages the unbroken series of its 
venerable hierarchy, and only the more magnificent 
from the ruins by which it was surrounded. Oh ! do 
not for any temporal boon betray the great principles 
which are to purchase you an eternity ! Here, from your 
very sanctuary,— here, with my hand on the endangered 
altars of your faith, in the name of that God, for the 
freedom of whose worship we are so nobly struggling ; 1 
conjure you, let no unholy hand profane the sacred ark 
of your religion ; preserve it inviolate ; its light is 
« light from heaven ;" follow it through all the perils of 
y oar journey ; and, like the fiery pillar of the captive 
Israel, it will cheer the desert of your ?)om1age, and 
guide to the land of your liberation ' 



DEFERRED TO IN THE PRECEDING SPEECH. 



DRAWN BY 



MR. PHILLIPS, 



AT THE REqREST 0? 



€{je Soman Catfjoitcg of ^reianir 



To the Honorable the Commons of the United Kingdom 
of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assem- 
bled : 

The humble Petition of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, 
whose Names are undersigned, on behalf of them- 
selves and others, professing the Roman Catholic Re- 
I igion, 

SHEWETH, 

THAT we, the Roman Catholic people of Ireland, 
again approach the legislature with a statement of the 
grievances under which we labour, and of which we 
most respectfully, but at the same time most firmly, so- 
licit the effectual address. Our wrongs are so notori- 
ous, and so numerous, that their minute detail is quite 
unnecessary, and would indeed be impossible, were it 
deemed expedient. Ages of persecution on the one 

G 



50 petition. 

hand, and patience on the other, sufficiently attest eur 
sufferings and our submission. Privations have been 
answered only by petition, indignities by remonstrance, 
injuries by forgiveness. It lias been a misfortune to 
have suffered for the sake of our religion ; but it has al- 
so been a pride to have born the best testimony to the 
purity of our doctrine, by the meekness of our endu- 
rance. 

We have sustained the power which spurned us ; we 
have nerved the arm whirh smote us ; we have lavished 
our strength, our Talent, and our treasures, and buoyed 
up, on the prodigal effusion of our young blood, the tri- 
umphant Ark of British Liberty. 

We approach, then, with confidence, an enlighened 
legislature; in the name of Nature, we ask our rights 
as men ; in the name of the Constitution, we ask our 
prhileges as subjects ; in the name of God, we ask the 
sacred protection of unpersecuted piety as Christians. 

Are securities required of us? We offer them — the 
best securities a throne can have—the affections of a peo- 
ple. W r e offer faith that was never violated, hearts that 
were never corrupted, valour that ne\er crouched. — 
Every hour of peril has proved our allegiance, and eve- 
ry field of Europe exhibits its example. 

We abjure all temporal authority, except that of our 
Sovereign ; we acknowledge no civil pre eminence, save 
that of our constitution ; and, for our lavish and volun- 
tary expenditure, we only ask a reciprocity of benefits. 

Separating, as we do, our civil rights from our spi- 
tual duties, we humbly desire that they may not he con- 
founded. We <* render unto Csesar the things that are 
Caesar's, " but we must also ** render unto God the 
tilings that are Gods'." Our church could not descend 
to claim a state-authority, nor do we ask for it a state 
aggrandizement : — its hopes, its powers, and its preten- 
sions, are of another world; and, when we raise our 
hands most humbly to the State, our prayer is not, that 
the fetters may be transferred to the hands which are 
raised for us to Heaven. We would not erect a splendid 
shrine even to Liberty on the ruins of the Temple. 

In behalf, then, of five millions of a brave and loyal 
people, we call upon the legislature to annihilate the 
odious bondage which bows down the mental, physical, 
and moral energies of Ireland ; and, in the name of that 



PETITION. 51 

@«sper whidi breathes charity towards all, we serl^ 
freedom of conscience for all the inhabitants of the Bri- 
tish empire. 

May it therefore please this honourable Housr to abo- 
lish all penal and disabling laws, which in any manner 
iufring" religious liberty, or restrict the free enjo> nient 
of the sacred rights of conscience, within these realms. 

And your petitioners will ever pray. 



ttlHlB iilDIOQUSSS 



TO 



H. R. H. THE PRINCESS OF WALES 



DRAWN BY 



MR. PHILLIPS, 



AT THE REQUEST OF 



€ge Uomatt Catljolic^ of ^[relanti- 



May it please your Royal Highness, 

WE, the Roman Catholic people of Ireland, beg leave 
to offer our unfeigned congratulations on your providen- 
tial escape from the conspiracy which so lately endan- 
gered both your life and honor — a conspiracy, unmanly 
in its motives, unnatural in its object, and unworthy in 
its means — a conspiracy, combining so monstrous an 
union of turpitude and treason, that it is difficult to say, 
whether royalty would have suffered more from its suc- 
sess, than human nature has from its conception. Our 
allegiance is not less shocked at the infernal spirit, which 
would sully the diadem, by breathing on its most preci- 
ous ornament, the \irtueof its wearer, than our best 
feelings are at the inhospitable baseness, which would 
betray the innocence of a female in a land of stran- 
ers ! ! 



$4 ADPDESS. 

Deem it not disrespectful, illustrious Lady, that from 
a people proverbially arde nt in the cause of the defence- 
less the shout of \irtuous congratulation should receive 
a feeble erho. Our harp ha^ long been unused to tones 
of gladness, and our hills but faintly answer the unusu- 
al accent. Your heart, however, can appreciate the si- 
lence inflicted by suffering; and ours, alas, feels rut 
too acutely that the commiseration is sincere which flows 
from sympathy. 

L*t us hope that, when congratulating virtue in your 
royal person, on her signal triumph over the perjured, 
the profligate, and the corrupt, we may also rejoice in 
the completion of its consequences. Let us hope that 
th * society of your only rhild again solaces your digni- 
fiVd retirement ; and that, to the misfortune of being a 
widowed wife, is not added the pang of being a childless 
mother ! 

But if, Madam, our hopes are not fulfilled; if in- 
de d, the cry nf an indignant and unanimous people is 
disregaided: console yourself with the reflection, that, 
though your exiled daughter may not hear the precepts-, 
of virtue from yii Mrs. she may at least study the prac- 
tice oi it in your example. 



a sbwdw 



DELIVERED 



BY MR. PHILLIPS 

&T A PUBLIC DINNER GIVEN TO HIM 



BY THE 



FRIENDS OF CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 

gjn Stbetpool. 



BELIEVE me, Mr. Chairman, I feel too sensibly 
the high and unmerited c< mpliment you have paid m« , to 
attempt any other return than the simple expression of 
my gratitude; to be just, I must be silent ; but tb< ugh 
the tongue is mute, my heart is much more than elo- 
quent. The kindness of friendship, the testimony of any 
class, however humble, carries with it no trifling grati- 
fication; but stranger as I am, to be so distinguished in 
this great city, whose wealth is its least commendation, 
the emporium of commerce, liberality, and public spi- 
rit ; the birth place of talent; the residence of i» tegrity ; 
the field where freedom seems to have rallied the last al- 
lies of her cause, as if with the noble consciousness that, 
though patriotism could not wreath the laurel round her 
brow, genius should at least raise it over her ashes . to 
be so distinguished, Sir, and in such a place, does, I 
confess, inspire me with a vanity which even with a 



56 A SPEECH 

sense of my unimportance cannot entirely silence. In- 
deed, Sir, the ministerial critics of Liverpool were 
right. I have no claim to this enthusiastic welcome. 
But I cannot look upon this testimonial so much as a tri- 
bute to myself, as an omen to that country with whose 
fortunes the dearest sympathies of my soul are intertwi- 
ned. Oh >es, I do foresee when she shall hear with 
what courtesy her most pretentionless advocate has been 
treated, how the same wind that wafts her the intelli- 
gence, will revive that flame within her, which the blood 
of ages has not been ablr to extinguish. It may be a de- 
lush e hope, but I am glad to grasp at any phantom that 
flits across the solitude of that country's desolation. On 
this subject you can scarcely be ignorant, for you have 
an Irishman resident amongst you. whom I am proud to 
call my friend ; whose fidelity to Ireland no absence can 
diminish ; who has at once the honesty to be candid, 
and the talent to be cominced. I need scarcely say 1 
allude to Mr. Casey. I knew. Sir, the statue was too 
striking to require a name upon the pedestal. — Alas, Ire- 
land has little now to console her, except the conscious- 
ness of having produced such men. — It would be a rea- 
sonable adulation in me to deceive you. Six centuries 
of base misgovernment, of causeless, ruthless, and un- 
grateful persecution, have now reduced that country to 
a crisis, at which t know not whether the friend of hu- 
manity has most cause to grieve or to rejoice ; because 
1 am not sure that the same feeling which prompts the 
tear at human sufferings, ought not to triumph in that 
increased infliction which may at length tire them out 
of endurance. 1 trust in God a change of system may 
in time anticipate the results of desperation ; but you 
may quite depend on it, a period is approaching, when, 
if penalty does not pause in the pursuit, patience will 
turn short on the puisuer. Can you wonder at it! Con- 
template : Ireland during any gi\en period of England's 
rule, and what a picture does she exhibit ? Behold her 
created in- all the prodigality of nature ; with a soil that 
anticipates the husbandman's desires ; with harbours 
courting the commerce of the world ; with rivers capa- 
ble of ti.<e most effective navigation ; with the ore of eve- 
ry metal struggling through her surface ; with a people, 
brave, generous, and int< llectual, literally forcing their 
way through the disabilities of their own country into 



AT LIYERF 57 

stations of every other, and well rewarding 
th it promotes them, by a hievements the most 

be oic, and allegiance without a blemish. How have 
the successive governments of England demeaned them- 
selves to a n ition, offering such an accumulation of mo- 
ral and political advantages ! See it in the «tate of Ire- 
land at this instant; in rsal bankruptcy that 
overwhelms her; in the loss of her trade; in the anni- 
hilation of her manufactures ; in the deluge of her debt ; 
in the divisions of her people; in all the loathsome ope- 
rations of an odious, monopolizing, hypocritical fanati- 
i on the one hand, wrestling with the untired hut na- 
tural reprisals of an irritated population on the other ! 
it required no common ingenuity t > reduce such a conn- 
try to such a situation. But it has heen done ; man has 
conquered the beneficence of the D'ity; his harpy touch 
has changed the viands to corruption : and that land, 
which you might have possessed in health and wealth and 
vigour, to support you in your hour of need, now writhes 
in the agonies of death, unable even to lift the shroud 
with which famine and fatuity try to encumber her con- 
vulsion. This is what I see a pensioned dress denomi- 
nates tranquility. Oh. wo to the land threatened with 
such tranquility ; solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant; 
it is not yet the tranquility of solitude ; it is not yet the 
tranquility of death; hut if you would know what it is, 
g * forth in the silence of creation, when every wind is 
hushed, and every echo mute, and all nature seems to 
listen in dumb and terrified and breathless expectation, 
go forth in such an hour, and see the terrible tranquility 
by which you are surrounded ! How could it he other- 
wise ; when for ages upon ages invention has fatigued 
itself with expedients for irritation ; when, as 1 have 
read with horror in the progress of my legal studies, the 
homicide of a •• mere Irishman" was considered Justifi- 
able ; and when his ignorance was the origin of all his 
crimes, his education was prohibited by Act of Parlia- 
ment I — when the people were worm-eaten by the odious 
vermin which a Church and State adultery had spawn- 
ed ; when a bad heart and brainless head, were the fangs 
by which every foreign adventurer and domestic traitor 
fastened upon office ; when the property of the native 
was but an invitation to plunder, and his rioh-acqui es- 
sence the signal for confiscation ; when religion itself 



58 A SPEECH 

was made the odious pretence for every persecution, and 
tlie fires of liell were alternately lighted with the cross, 
and quenched in the blood of its defenceless followers ! 
I speak of times that arc past : but can their recollec- 
tions, can their consequences be so readily eradicated. 
Why, however, should I refer to periods that are dis- 
tant ? Behold, at this instant, five millions of her peo- 
ple disqualified on account of their faith, and that by a 
country professing freedom ! and that under a govern- 
ment calling itself Christian ! You, (when I say you, 
of course I mean, not the high-minded people of England, 
but tire men who misgovern us both) seem to have taken 
out a roving commission in search of grievances abroad, 
Whilst you overlook the calamities at your own door, 
and of your own infliction. You traverse the ocean to 
emancipate the African ; you cross the line to convert 
the Hindoo ; you hurl your thunder against the savage 
Algerine ; but your brethren at home, who speak the 
same tongue, ackowledge the same King, and kneel to 
the same God, cannot get one visit from your itinerant 
humanity ! Oh, such a system is almost too abominable 
for a name ; it is a monster of impiety, impolicy, in- 
gratitude, and injustice ! '1 he pagan nations of anti- 
quity scarce!} acted on such barbarous principles. Look 
to ancient Rome, with her sword in one hand and her 
constitution in the other, healing the injuries of con- 
quest with the embrace of brotherhood, and wisely con- 
verting the captive into the citizen. Look to her great 
e^emy, foe glorious Carthagenian, at tiie foot of tiie 
Alps, ranging his prisoners round him, and by the po- 
litic option of captivity or arms, recruiting his legions 
with tlie very men whom he had literally conquered in- 
to gratitude ! They laid their foundations deep in the 
human heart, and their success w r as proportionate to 
their policy. You complain of the violence of the Irish 
Catholic : can you wonder he is violent ? It is the con- 
sequence of your own infliction — 

*' The flesh will quiver where the pincers tear, 
The blood will follow where the knife is driven." 

Your friendship has been to him worse than hostility ; 
be feels its embrace but by the pressure of its fetters ! I 
am only amaxed he is not more violent. He fills your 



AT LIVERPOOL. 59 

exchequer, he fights your battles, he feeds your clergy 
from whom he derives no benefit, he shares your bur- 
dens, he shares your perils, he shares every thing ex- 
cept your privileges, can you wonder he is violent ? No 
matter what his merit, no matter what his claims, no 
matter what his services; he sees himself a nominal 
subject, and a real slave ; and his children, the heirs, 
perhaps of his toils, perhaps of his talents, certainly of 
his disqualifications — can you wonder he is violent ? He 
sees every pretended obstacle to his emancipation va- 
nished ; Catholic Europe your ally, the Bourbon on the 
throne, the Emperor a captive, the Pope a friend, the 
aspersions on his faith disproved by his allegiance to 
you against, alternately, every Catholic potentate m 
Christendom, and he feels himself branded with heredi- 
tary degradation — can yon wonder, then, that he is vio- 
lent ? He petitioned humbly ; his tamenoss was constru- 
ed into a proof of apathy. He petitioned boldly ; his 
remonstrance was considered as an impudent audacity. 
He petitioned in peace ; he was told it was not the time ; 
He petitioned in war, he was told it was not the time, — 
A Strang interval, a prodigy in policies, a pause be- 
tween peace and war, which appeared to be just made 
for him, arose ; I allude to the period between the re- 
treat of Louis and the restoration of Bonaparte ; he pe- 
titioned then, and he was told it was not the time. Oh, 
ska ue ! shame ! shame ! T hope he will petition no more 
to a parliament so equivocating. However, 1 am not 
sorry they did so equivocate, because I think they have 
suggested one common remedy for the grievances of both 
countries, and that remedy is a Reform of that Par- 
liament. Without that, I plainly see, there is no 
hope for Ireland, there is no salvation for .England ; 
they will act towards you as they have done towards us; 
they will admit your reasoning, they will admire your 
eloquence, and they will prove their sincerity by a strict 
perseverance in the impolicy you have exposed, and the 
profligacy you have deprecated. Look to England at 
this moment. To what a state have they not reduced 
her ? Over this vast island, for whose wealth the winds 
of Heaven seemed to blow, covered as she once was with 
the gorgeous mantle of successful agriculture, all stud- 
ded over with the gems of art and manufacture, there is 
now scarce an object but industry in rags, and patience 



60 A SPEECH 

in despair : the merchant without a ledger* the fields 
without a harvest, the shop« without a customer, the 
Exchange deserted, and the Gazette crowded, from the 
most heart-rending comments on that nefarious system, 
in support of which, peers and contractors, stock job- 
bers and sinecurists, in short, the whole trained, col- 
lared, pampered, and rapacious park of ministerial bea- 
gles, have been, for half a century* in the most clamo- 
rous and discordant uproar ! During all this misery 
how are the pilots of the state employed? Why, in 
feeding the bloat d mammoth of sinecure! in weighing 
the farthings of so toe underlines salary ! in preparing 
Ireland for a garrison, and England for a poor-house, 
in the structure of Chinese palaces ! the decoration of 
dragoons, and the erection of public buildings!! ! Oh, 
it's easily seen we have a saint in the Exchequer ! he 
has studied Scripture to some purpose! the. famishing 
pe >ple cry out for bread, and the scriptural minister gives 
them stones / Such has been the result of the blessed 
Pitt system, which amid oceans of Hood, and 800 mil- 
expenditure, has left you, after all your victories, 
a triumphant dupe, a trophied bankrupt. I have heard 
before of states ruined by the visitations of Providence, 
devastated by famine, waster! by fir* 1 , overcome by ene- 
mies ; hut never until now did I see a state like Kng- 
gland, impoverished by her spoils, and conquered hy 
her successes ! She has fought tin* fight of Europe ; 
site has purchased all its editable blood; she has subsi- 
dized all dependencies in their own cause ; she has con 
quered hy sea, she has conquered by land ; she has got 
peace, and of course, or the Pit' apostles would n<»t have 
made peace, she has got her •« indemnity for the past, 
and security for the future," and here she is, after all 
her vanity and all her victories, surrounded by desola- 
tion, like one of the pyramids of Egypt; amid the 
gra deur of the desert, full of magnificence and death, at 
once a trophy and a tomb ! The heart of any reflecting 
ma»i must burn wiiiin him. when he thinks that tire war 
thus sanguinary in its operations, and confessed!) ruin- 
ous in its expenditure, was even still more odious in its 
principle! It was a war avowedly undertaken for the 
purpose of forcing France out of her undoubted rigid of 
choosing her own monarch; a war whir h uprooted the 
very foundations of the English constitution ; which li- 



AT LIVERPOOL. 61 

belled the most glorious era in our national annals; 
whi'-h declared tyranny eternal, and announced to the 
people, amid the" thunder of artillery, that no matter 
how aggrieved, their only allowable attitude was that >f 
supplication ; which, when it told the Frenrh reformer 
of 1793, that his defeat was just, told the British re- 
former of 1698, his triumph was treason, and exhibit tl 
to historv, the. terrific farre of a Prince of the House if 
Brunswick, tlie creature of the Revolution, offering 

A HIM4N HECATOMB CPoN THI GRAVE OF J \MES .THE 

Second ! ! What else have you done ? You have suc- 
ceeded indeed in dethroning Napoleon, a. d you have 
dethroned a monarch, who, with all his imputed crimes, 
and vices, shed a splendour around royalty, too power- 
ful for the feeble vision of legitimacy even to bear. lie 
had many faults : 1 do not speak to palliate them. He 
deserted his principles ; I rejoice that he has suff red. 
But still let us be generous even in our enmities. How 
grand was bis march ! How magnificent his destiny! 
Sav what we will, Sir, he will be the land mark of our 
times in the eye of posterity. The goal of other men's 
speed was his starting-post; crowns were his play- 
things, thrones his footstool : hestr.de from victory to 
victory ; his path was " a plane of continued elevations." 
Surpassing the boast of the too confident Roman, he but 
stamped upon the earth, and not only armed men, hut 
states and dynasties, and arts and sciences, all that 
mind could imagine, or industry produce, started up, 
the creation of enchantment. He has fallen— as the late 
Mr. Whitebread said, •< you made him, and he unmade 
himself" — his own ambition was his glorious conqueror. 
He 1, with a sublime audacity, to grasp the 

fires of [leaven, and his heathen retribution has been 
the vulture and the rock ! ! I do not ask what you have 
gained by it, because, in place of gaining anything, you 
are infinitely worse than when you commenced the con- 
test ! But what have you done, for Europe? What have 
yon achieved for man ? Have morals been ameliorated ? 
Has liberty been strengthened ? Has any one improve- 
ment in politics or philosophy been produced? Let us 
see how. You have restored to Portugal a Prince of 
Whom we know nothing, exeept that, when his domi- 
nions were invaded, his people distracted, his crown in 
danger, and all that could interest the highest energies 



6* A SPEECH 

of man at issue, he l^ft his cause to he romhated by fo- 
reign bayonets, and fled with a dastard precipitation to 
the shameful security of a distant hemisphere ! You 
havp restored to Spain a wretch of even worse than pro- 
verbial princely ingratitude $ who filled his dungeons, 
and ted his rack with the heroic remnant that braved 
war, and famine, and massacre beneath his banners : 
who rewarded patriotism with the prison, fidelity with 
the torture, heroism with the scaffold, and piety with 
the Inquisition ; whose royalty was published by the 
signature of his death warrants, and whose religion 
evaporated in the embroidering of petticoats for the Bles- 
sed Virgin I You have furred upon France a family to 
whom misfortune could tearh no mercy, or experience 
wisdom ; *i dictive in prosperity, servile in defeat, ti- 
mid in the field, vacillating in the cabinet ; suspicion 
amongst themselves, discontent: amongst their followers; 
their memories tenacious but of the punishments thev had 
provoked, their piety active but, in subserviency to their 
priesthood, and their power passive but in the subjuga- 
tion of their people! Such ace the dynasties you have 
tonfe^red on Europe. In the \ery act, that of enthron- 
ing three, individuals of the same family, you ha\e com- 
mitted in politics a capital error; but Providence has 
countermined the ruin you were preparing ; and whilst 
the impolicy presents the chance, their impotency pre- 
cludes the danger of a coalition. As to the rest of Eu- 
rope, how r has it been ameliorated ? What solitary be- 
nefit have the « deliverers" conferred ? They have 
partitioned the states of the feeble to feed the rapacity of 
the powerful ; and after hating alternately adored and 
deserted Napoleon, they have wreaked their vengeance 
on the noble, but unfortunate fidelity that spurned their 
example. Do you want proofs ; look to Saxony, look to 
to Genoa, look to Norway, but, above all, to Poland ; 
that speaking monument of regal murder and legitimate 
robbery— 

Oh ! bloodiest picture in the book of time — 
Sarmatia fell — unwept — without a crime ! 

Here was an opportunity to recompense that brave, he- 
roic, generous, martyred, and devoted people ; here 
was an opportunity to convince Jacobinism that crowns 



AT IIVERFOOfc. 63 

and crimes were not, of course, co-existent, and that 
the highway rapacity of one generation might be atoned 
by the penitential retribution of another ! Look to Ita- 
ly ! parcelled out to temporizing Austria — the land of 
the muse, the historian, and the hero ; the scene of eve- 
ry classic recollecti »n ; the sacred fane of antiquity, 
wh^re the genius of the world weeps and worships, and 
the spirits of the past htart into, life at the inspiring pil- 
grimage of some kindred Roscoe. You do yourselves ho- 
nor by this noble, this natural enthusiasm. Long may 
you enjoy the pleasure of possessing, never can you lose 
the pride of having produced the scholar without pedant- 
ry, the patriot without reproach, the Christian without 
superstition, the man without a blemish ! It is a subject 
I could dwell on with delight for e\er. How painful 
our transition to the disgusting path of the deliverers. 
Look to Prussia, after fruitless toil and wreathiess tri- 
umphs, mocked with the promise of a visionary consti- 
tution. Look to France, chained and plundered, weep- 
ing over the tomb of her hopes and her heroes. Look 
to England, eaten by the cancer of an incurable debt, 
exhausted by poor rates, supporting a civil list of near 
a million and a half, annual amount, guarded by a 
gtauding army of 140,000 men, misrepresented by a 
House of Commons, 90 of whose members in places and 
pensions derive 200,000/. in yearly emoluments from 
the minister, mocked with a military peace, and girt 
with the fortifications of a war-establishment ! Shades 
of heroic millions, these are thy achievements ! Mo,v- 
3T£it of Legitimacy, this is thy consummation ! ! | 
The past is out of power; it is high time to provide 
against the future. Retrenchment and reform are now 
become not only expedient for our prosperity, but ne- 
cessary to our very existence. Can any man of sense 
say that the present system should continue ? What ! 
when war and peace have alternately thrown every fami- 
ly in the empire into mourning and poverty, shall the 
fattened tax gatherer extort the starving manufacturer's 
last shilling, to swell the unmerited and enormous sine- 
cure uf some wealthy pauper ? Shall a borough-monger- 
ing faction convert what is misnamed the National Mis- 
representation into a mere instrument for raising the 
supplies which are to gorge its own venality ? Shall the 
mock dignitaries of Whiggisni and Toryism lead their 



64 A SPEECH 

hungry retainers to contest the profits of an alternate 
ascendancy over the prostrate interest of a too gener-ms 
people ? These are questions which I blush to ask, 
which I shudder to think must be either answered by the 
parliament or the people. Let our rulers prudently 
avert the interrogation. We live in times when the 
slightest remonstrance should command attention, when 
the minutest speck that merely dots the edge of the po- 
lriral horizon, may be the car ofthe approaching spirit 
of the storm? Oh! they are times whose omen no fan- 
cied security can avert ; times of the most awfnl and 
portentous admonition. Establishments the most solid, 
thrones the most ancient, coalitions the most powerful 
have crumbled before our eyes; and the creature of a 
ent robed, and crowned, and sceptred, raised his 
fairy creation on their ruins The warning has been 
given; may it not have been given in vain ! 

I feel. Sir. that the magnitude of the topics I have 
touched, and the immiueficy of the . crils which seem 
to surround us, have led me far beyond the limits of a 
convivial meeting. I see I have my apology in your 
indulgence — but 1 cannot prevail on myself to trespass 
farther. Accept, again, Gentlemen, my most gratefnl 
acknowledgments. Never, never, can I forget this day : 
in private life it shall be the companion «»f my solitude : 
and if, in the caprices of that fortune which will at times 
degrade the high and dignify the humble, I should here- 
after be called to any station of responsibility, I think I 
may at least fearlessly promise the friends who thus 
crowd around me, that no act of mine shall ever raise 
a blush at the recollection of their early encourage- 
ment. I hope, however, the benefit of this day will not 
be confined to the humble individual you have so honor- 
ed : I hope it will cheer on the young aspirants after 
virtuous fame in both our countries, by proving to 
them, that however, for the moment, envy or igno- 
rance, or corruption, may depreciate them, there is a 
reward in store for the man who thinks with integrity 
and acts with decision. Gentlemen, you will add to the 
obligations you have already conferred, by delegating 
to me the honor of proposing to you the health of a man, 
whose virtues adorn, and whose talents powerfully ad- 
vocate our cause ; I mean the health 01 your worthy 
Chairman, Mr. Shepherd. 



A SHNBIBQJIB 



OF 



MR. PHILLIPS, 



IN 



€§e Cage of <0ut§rte ©. £>mnt } 



DELIVERED IN 



THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS, DUBLIN. 



rd and Gentlemen, 

his case I am of counsel for the plaintiff, who has 

3d me, with the kind concession of my much more 

nt colleagues, to detail to you the story of his mis- 

les. In the course of a Ion friendihip which has 

sted between us, originating in mutual pursuits, 

cemented by our mutual attachments, never, until 

instant, did I feel any thing but pleasure in the 

ns which it created, or the duty which it imposed. 

selecting me, however, from this bright array of 

»Ing and of eloquence, I cannot help being pained 

he kindness of a partiality which forgets its interest 

he exercise of its affection, and confides the task of 

ictised wisdom to the uncertain guidance of youth and 

i 



66 A SPEECH IN THE CASE OT 

inexperience. He has thought, perhaps, that truth 
needed no set phrase of speech; that misfortune should 
net veil the furrows which its tears had burned j or 
lii^e, under the decorations of an artful drapery, the 
heart-rent hearings with which its bosom throbbed. He 
has surely thought that by contrasting mine with the 
powerful talents selected by his antagonist, he was giv- 
ing: you a proof that the appeal he made was to your 
reason, not to your feelings — to the integrity of your 
hearts, not the exasperation of your passions. Happily, 
however, for him, happily for you, happily for the 
country, happily for the profession, on subjects such as 
this, the experience of the oldest amongst us is but slen- 
der ; deeds such as this are not indigenous to an Irish 
soil, or naturalized beneath an Irish climate. We hear 
of them, indeed, as we do of the earthquakes that con- 
vulse, or the pestilence that infects, less favoured re- 
gions ; but the record of the calamity is only read with 
the generous scepticism of innocence, or an involuntary 
thanksgiving to the Providenee that h^s preserved us. 
No matter how we may have graduated m the scale of 
nations ; no matter with what wreath we may have been 
adorned, or what blessings we may have been denied ; 
no matter what may have been our feuds, our follies, or 
our misfortunes ; it has at least been universally con- 
ceded, tiiat our hearths were the home of the domestic 
virtues, and that love, honour, and conjugal fidelity, 
were the deai* and indisputable deities of our household : 
around the fire-side of the Irish hovel, hospitality cir- 
cumscribed its sacred circle : and a provision to pun ish, 

created a suspicion of the possibility of its violation. 

Bui of all the ties that bound — of all the bounties that 
blessed her — Ireland most obeyed, most loved, most re- 
vered the nuptial contract. She saw it the gift of Hca- 
> . u. the charm of earth, the joy of the present, the pro- 
of the future, the innocence of enjoyment, the chas- 
tity of passion, the sacrament of love : the slender cur- 
tain that shades the sanctuary of her marriage bed, lias 
in its purity the splendour of the mountain-snow r , and 
tor its protection the texture of the mountain adamant. 
Gentlemen, that national sanctuary has been invaded ; 
that venerable divinity has been violated ; and its tender 
est pledges torn from their shrine, by the polluted ra^ 



GUTHBIE Y. STER5E. 

pine of a kindless, heartless, prayerless, remorseless 
adulterer ! To you — religion defiled, morals insulted, 
law despised, publir order foully violated, and indivi- 
dual happiness want only wounded, make th- ir melancho- 
ly appeal. You will hear the facts with as much patience 
as indignation will allow — I will, myself, ask of you to 
adjudge them with as much mercy as justice will ad- 
mit. 

The Plaintiff in this case is John Guthrie ; by birth, 
by education, by profession, by better than all, by | 
tice and b> principles, a gentleman. Believe me, it is 
not from the common-place of advocacy, or from the 
blind partiality of friendship, that I say of him that 
her considering the virtues that adorn life, or the 
blandishments that endear it, he has few supe- iocs. — 
Surely, if a spirit that disdained dishonour, if a heart 
that knew not guile, if a life above repro ich, and a cha- 
racter beyond suspicion, could have been a security 
against misfortunes, his lot must base been happiness. 
I speak in the presence of that profession to which he 
was an ornament, and with whose members his man- 
hood has been familiar,- and I -ay ol th a con- 
fidence that defies refutation, that, whether we consider 
him in bis private or hjs public station. a« a man or 
as a lawyer, there never breathed that being less « apa- 
ble of exciting enmity towards himself, or of offering, 
even by implication, an offence to others. If he had a 
fault, it was. thai, ao >ve crime, he was above suspi- 
cion : and to that noblest error of a noble nature he has 
fallen a victim. Having spent his youth in the culti?a- 
tion of a mind which must have one day led him to emi- 
nence, he became a member of the profession by which I 
am surrounded. Possessing, as he did, a moderate 
e, and looking forward to the most flatter- 
ins: prospects, it was natural for him to select amongst 
the ether sex, some friends who should adorn his for- 
tunes, and deceit e his toils. He found such a friend, 
or thought he found ner, in the person of Miss TVarren* 
the only daughter of an eminent solicitor. Young, beau- 
I, and accomplished, she was « adorned with all that 
earth or heaven a uld bestow to make her amiable." 
Virtue net er found a fairer temple; beauty never veiled 
a purer sanctuary : the graces of her mind retained the 



68 A SPEECH IN THE CASE OE 

admiration whirh her beauty had attracted, and the eye, 
Which her charms fired, became subdued and chastened 
in the modesty of their association. She was in the 
dawn of life, with all its fragrance round her, and yet 
so pure, that even the blush which sought to hide her 
lustre, but disclosed the vestal deity that burned beneath 
it. No wonder an adoring husband anticipated all the 
joys this world could give him ; no wonder the parental 
eye, which beamed upon their union, saw, in the per- 
spective, an old age of happiness, and a posterity of 
honour. Methinksl see them at the sacred altar, join- 
ing those hands which Heaven commanded none should 
separate, repaid for many a pang of anxious nurture by 
the sweet smile of filial piety; and in the holy rapture of 
tin 4 rite, worshipping the power that blessed their chil- 
dren, and gave them hope their names should live here- 
after. It was viitue^s vision! None but fiends could 
envy it. Year after year confirmed the anticipation ; 
four lovely children blessed their union. Nor was their 
love the summer-passion of prosperity; misfortune proved 
afflictions chastened it: before *the mandate of that mys- 
terious Tower which will at times despoil the paths of 
innocence, to decorate the chariot of triumphant *il- 
lainy, my client had to bow in silent resignation. He 
owed his adversity to the benevolence of his spirit ; he 
•• went security for friends ;" those friends deceived 
him, and be was obliged to seek in other lands, that 
safe asylum which his own denied him. He was glad 
to accept an offer of professional business in Scotland 
during his temporary embarrassment. With a conjugal 
devotion, Mrs. Guthrie accompanied him; and in her 
smile th* 1 soil of a stranger was a home, the sorrows of 
adversity were dear to him. During their residence in 
Scotland, a period about a year, you will find they lived 
as they had ft ne in Ireland, and as they continued to do 
until this Calamitous occurrence, in a state of nniit r- 
rupted happiness. You shall hear, most satisfactorily, 
that iheir domestic life was unsullied and undisturbed. 
Happy at home, happy in a husband's love, happy in 
her parent's fondness; happy in the children she had 
nursed, Mrs. Guthrie carried into every circle — and 
there wos r:o circle in which her society was not court- 
that cheerfulness which never was a companion of 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE. (59 

guilt, or a stranger to innocence. My client saw her 
the pride of his family, the favourite of his friends; at 
once the organ and ornament of his happiness. His ara- 
hition awoke, his industry redoubled ; and that fortune, 
which though for a season it may frown, never totally 
abandons probity and virtue, had begun to smile on him. 
He was beginning to rise in the ranks of his competi- 
tors, and rising with such a character, that emulation 
itself rather rejoiced than envied. It was at this crisis. 
in this, the noon of his happiness, and day-spring of his 
fortune, that, to the ruin of both, the Defendant became 
acquainted with his family. With the serpent's wile, and 
the serpent's wickedness, he stole into the Eden of do- 
mestic life, poisoning all that was pure, polluting all that 
was lovely, defying God. destroying man ; a demon in 
the disguise of virtue, a herald of hell in the paradise of 
innocence. His name Gentlemen, is William Peter 
Baker Duxstanville Sterne ; one would think he 
had epithets enough, without adding to them the title of 
Jbiidterev. Of his character I know but little, and I am 
sorry t!>at I know so much. If I am instructed rightly, 
he is one of those vain and vapid coxcombs, whose vices 
tinge the frivolity of their follies with something of a 
more odious character than ridicule — with just head 
enough to contrive crime, but not heart enough to feel 
for its consequences j one of those fashionable insects, 
tftatf oily has p tinted, and fortune plumed, for the annoy- 
ance of one atmosphere; dangerous alike in their torpi- 
dity and their animation ; infesting where they fly, and 
poisoning where they repose. It was through the in- 
troduction of Mr. Fallon, the son of a most respectable 
lady, then resident in Temple-street, and a near rela- 
tive of Mr. Guthrie, that tiie Defendant and this unfor- 
tunate woman first became acquainted : to such an in- 
troduction the shadow of a suspicion could not possibly 
attach. Occupied himself in his professional pursuits, 
my client had little leisure for the amusement of society ; 
however, to the protection of Mrs. Fallon, her son, and 
daughters, moving in the first circles, unstained by any 
possible imputation, he without hesitation entrusted all 
that was dear to him. No suspicion could be awaken- 
ed as to any man to whom such a female as Mrs. Fallon 
permitted an intimacy with her daughters; while at her 



TO A SFEECH IN THE CASE OE 

"house then, and at the parties which it originated, the 
defendant and Mrs. Guthrie had frequent opportunities 
of meeting. Who could have suspected, that, under the 
very roof of virtue, in the presence of a venerable and 
respected matron, and of that innocent family, whom 
she had reared up in the sunshine of her example, the 
most abandoned profligate could have plotted his iniqui- 
ties ! Who would not rather suppose, that, in the re- 
buke of such a presence, guilt would have torn away the 
garland from its brow, and blushed itself into virtue. — 
But the depravity of this man was of no common dye : 
the asylum of innocence was selected only as the sanc- 
tuary of his crimes ; and the pure and the spotless cho- 
sen as his associates, because they would be more un- 
suspected subsidiaries to his wickedness. Nor were his 
manner and his language less suit: 1 ? than his society to 
the concealment of his objects. If you believed himself, 
the sight of suffering affected his nerves ; the bare men- 
tion of immorality smote upon his conscience; an inter- 
course with the continental courts had refined his mind 
into a painful sensibility to the barbarisms of Ireland! 
and yet an internal tenderness towards his native land 
so irresistably impelled him to improve it by his resi 
dence, that he was a hapless victim to the excess of his 
feelings ! — the exquisiteness of his polish ! — and the ex- 
cellence of his patriotism His English estates, he said, 
amounted to about 10,000/. a year ,• and he retained in 
Ireland only a trifling SOOOJ. more, as a kind of trust 
for the necessities of its inhabitants ! — In short, accord- 
ing to his own description, he was in religion a saint, and 
in morals a stoic ! — a sort of wandering philanthropist ! 
making, like the Sterne, who, he confessed, had the ho- 
nour of his name and his connexion, a Sentimental Jour- 
ney in search of objects over whom his heart might weep 
and his sensibility expand itself! 

How happy it is, that, of the philosophic profligate 
only retaining the vices and the. name, his rashness has 
led to the arrest of crimes, which he had all his turpi- 
tude to commit, without any of his talents to embellish. 

It was by arts such as I have alluded to — by pretend- 
ing the most strict morality, the most sensitive honour, 
the most high and iiiideviating principles of virtue, — 
that the defendant banished every suspicion of his de- 



GUTHRIE V. STEUNE. 71 

signs. As far as appearances went, he was exactly 
what he described himself. His pretensions to morals he 
supported by the most reserved and respectful behaviour : 
his hand was lavish in the distribution of his charities ; 
and a spiendid equipage, a numerous retinue, a system of 
the most profuse and prodigal expenditure, left no doubt 
as to the reality of his fortune. Thus circumstanced, he 
found an easy admittance to the house of Mrs. Fallon, 
and there he had many opportunities of seeing Mrs. 
Guthrie ; for, between his family and that of so respec- 
table a relative as Mrs. Fallon, my client had much anx- 
iety to increase the connexion. They visited together- 
some of the public amusements ; they partook of some 
of the fetes in the neighborhood of the metropolis ,* hut 
upon every occasion, Mrs. Guthrie was accompanied bv 
her own mother, and by the respectable females of Mrs. 
Fallon's family. I say, upon every occasion : and I chal- 
lenge them to produce one single instance of those inno- 
cent excursions, upon which the slanders of an interest- 
ed calumny have been let loose, in which this unfortu- 
nate lady was not matronized by her female relatives, 
and those some of the most spotless characters in society. 
Between Mr. Guthrie and the defendant, the acquaint- 
ance was but slight. Upon one occasion alone they din- 
ed together ; it was at the house of the plaintiff's father- 
in-law ; and, that you may have some illustration of the 
defendant's character, I shall briefly instance his con- 
duct at this dinner. On being introduced to Mr. War- 
ren, he apologized for any deficiency of etiquette in his 
visits, declaring that he had been seriously occupied in 
arranging the affairs of his lamented father, who, though 
tenant for life, had contracted debts to an enormous a- 
mount. He had already paid upwards of 10,000/. which 
honour and not law compelled him to discharge ; as, 
sweet soul ! he could not bear that any one should suffer 
unjustly by his family ! His subsequent conduct was 
c^nite consistent with this hypocritical preamble : at din- 
ner, he sat at a distance from Mrs. Guthrie ; expatiated 
to her husband upon matters of morality ; entering into 
a high-flown panegyric on the virtues of domestic life, 
and the comforts of connubial happiness, in short, had* 
there been any idea of jealoasy, his manner would have 
banished it ; and the mind must have been worse than 



72 A SPEECH IN THE CASE Of 

sceptical, which would refuse its credence to his surface 
morality. Gracious God ! when the heart once admits 
guilt as its associate, how every natural emotion flies be. 
foie it ! Surely, surely, here was a scene to reclaim, if 
it were possible, this remorseless defendant, — admitted 
to her father's table under the shield of hospitality, he 
saw a young and lovely female surrounded by her pa- 
rents, ber husband, and her children ; the prop of those 
parents* age: the idol of that husband's love; the an- 
chor of those children's helplessness; the sacred orb of their 
domestic circle ; giving tbeir smile its light, and their 
bliss its being ; robbed of whose beams the little lucid 
world of their home must hecome chill, unrheered, and 
colourless for ever. He saw them happy, he saw them 
united ; blessed with peace, and purity, and profusion ; 
throbbing with sympathy and throned in love ; depicting 
the innocence of infancy, and the joys of manhood he- 
fore the venerahlo eye of age. as if to soften the farewell 
of one world by the pure and pictured anticipation of a 
better. Yet, even tbere, hid in the very sun beam of 
that happiness, the demon of its destined desolation lurk- 
ed. Just Heaven ! of what materials was that heart 
composed, which could meditate coolly on the murder of 
such enjoyments ; which innocense could not soften, nor 
peace propitiate, nor hospitality appease ; but which, in 
the very beam and bosorn of its benefaction, warmed and 
excited itself into a more vigorous venom? AVas there 
no sympathy in the scene ? Was there no remorse at 
the crime ? Was there no horror at its consequences ? 

" Were honour, virtue, conscience, all exil'd ! 
Was there no pity, no relenting ruth, 
To show the parents fondling o'er tbeir child, 
Then paint the ruin'd pair, and their distraction wild !' ? 

Bums. 

No ! no ! He was at that instant planning their destruc- 
tion ; and, even within four short days, he deliberately 
reduced those parents to childishness, that husband to wi- 
dowhood, those smiling infants to anticipated orphanage, 
and that peaceful, hospitable, confiding family, to help- 
less, hopeless, irremediable ruin ! 

Upon the first clay of the ensuing July, Mr. Gathrie 
was to dine with the '"onnaught bar. at the hotel of Tor- 



GTTTHBIE V. STERNE 



37 



tobeilo. It is a custom. I am told, with the gentlemeu 
of that association to dine together previous to the cir- 
cuit ; of course my clientceuld not have decorously ab- 
sented himself. Mrs. Guthrie appeared a little feverish, 
and he reou sted that an his retiring, she would compose 
herself to rest ; she promised him she would ; and when 
he departed, somewhat abruptly, to put some letters in 
the post-office, she exclaimed, •• What ! John, are you 
going to leave me thus ?" He returned, and she kissed 
him. They seldom parted, even for any time, without 
that token of affection. I am thus minute, Gentlemen, 
that you may see, up to the last moment, what little 
cause the husband had for suspicion, and how impossible 
it was for him to foipsee a perfidy which nothing short 
of infatuation could have produced. He proceeded to his 
companions with no other regret than that necessity, for 
a moment, forced him from a home which the smile of 
affection had never ceased to endear to him. After a 
dav, however, passed, as such a day might-have been 
supposed to pass, in the flow of soul. ?.nd the philosophy 
of pleasure, he returned home to stare his happiness 
with her, without whom no happiness ever had been 
perfect. Alas ! he was never to behold her more » ima- 
gine, if you can, the phrenzy of his astonishment, in 
being informed by Mrs. Porter, the daughter of the for- 
mer landlady, that about two hours before, she had at- 
tended Mrs. Guthrie to a confectioner's shop; that a 
carriage had drawn up at the corner of (he street, into 
which a gentleman, whom she recognised to be a Mr. 
Sterne, had handed her, and they instantly departed. 
I must tell you, there is every reason to believe, that 
this woman was the confidant of the conspiracy. What 
a pity that the object of that guilty confidence had not 
something of humanity; that, as a female, she did not 
feel fqr the character of her sex ; that as a mother, she 
did not mourn over the sorrows of a helpless family ! 
What pangs might she not have spared ? My client 
could hear no mere ; even at the dead of night he rushed 
into the street, as if in its own dark hour he could dis- 
cover guilt's recesses. In vain did he awake the peace- 
ful family of the horror strurk Mrs. Fallon ; in vain, 
with the parents of the miserable fugitive, did he mingle 
the tears of an impotent distraction , in vain, a misera- 
ble maniac, did he traverse the silent streets of the ffie- 



Tv 



74 A SPEECH IX THE CA9E OF 

tropolis, affrighting virtue from its slumber v.ith lhv 
spectre of its own ruin. 1 will not harrow you with its 
heart-rending recital. But imagine you see him, when 
the day had dawned, returning wretched to his deserted 
dwelling ; seeing in every chamber a memorial of his 
loss, and hearing every -tongueiess object eloquent of his 
wo. Imagine you see him, in the reverie of his grief, 
trying to persuade himself it was all a vision, and awa- 
kened only to the horrid truth by his helpless children 
asking him foi their mother ! — Gentlemen, this is not a 
picture of the fancy ; it literally occurred ; there is some- 
thing less of romance in the reflection, which his chil- 
dren awakened in the mind of their afflicted father; he 
ordered that they should be immediately habited in 
mourning. How rational sometimes are the ravings of 
insanity ! For all the purposes of maternal life, poor 
innocents ! they have no mother ! her tongue no more 
can teach, her hand no more can tend them ; for thorn 
there is not " speculation in her eyes ; M to them her life 
is something worse than death ; as if the awful grave had 
yawned her forth, she moves before them shrouded aR 
in sin, the guilty burden of its peaceless sepulchre. Bet- 
ter* far better, their little feet had followed in her fune- 
ral, than the hour which taught her value, should reveal 
her vice, — mourning her loss, they might have blessed 
her memory ; and shame need not have rolled its fires 
into the fountain of their sorrow. 

As soon as his reason became sufficiently collected, 
Mr. Guthrie pursued the fugitives ; he cha&ed them suc- 
cessively to Kildare, to Carlow, Waterford, Milford- 
haven, on through Wales, and finally to Ilfracombe, in 
Devonshire, where the clue was lost. I am glad that, 
in tills route and restlessness of their guilt, as the crime 
. they perpetrated was foreign to our soil, they did not 
make that soil the scene of its habitation. I will not fol- 
low them through this joyless journey, nor brand by my 
record the unconscious scene of its pollution. But phi- 
losophy never taught, the pulpit never enforced, a more 
imperative morality than fhe itinerary of that accursed 
tour promulgates. Oh ! if there be a maid or matron in 
this island, balancing between the alternative of virtue 
and of crime, trembling between the IipII of the seducer 
and the adulterer, and the heaven of the parental and 
nuptial home, let her pause upon this one out of the 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE. • 75 

many horrors I could depict, — and be converted. I 
will give you the relation in the very words of my brief; 
I cannot improve upon the simplicity of the recital : 

« On the 7th of July, tliey arrived at Milford ; the 
captain of the packet dined with them, and was asto- 
nished at the magnificence of her dress." (Poor wretch ! 
she was decked and adorned for the sacrifice !) « The 
nest day they dined alone. Towards evening, the house- 
maid, passing near their chamber, heard Mr. Sterne 
scolding, and apparently beating her J In a short time 
after, Mrs. Guthrie rushed out of her chamber into the 
drawing room, and throwing herself in agony upon the 
sofa, she exclaimed, Oh 1 what an unhappy wretch I 
am I I left my home where I was happy , too happy, se- 
duced by a man who has deceived me. — My poor hus- 
ra^d ! my dear children! Oh I if they would even let 
my little William live with me ! it would be some co;?- 
so'Lation to my broken heart !' 

" Alas ! nor children more can she behold, 
Nor friends, nor sacred home." 

"Well might she lament over her fallen fortunes ! well 
might she mourn over the memory of days when the sun 
of heaven seemed to rise but for her happiness ! well 
might she recall the home she had endeared, the chil- 
dren she had nursed, the hapless husband, of whose life 
she w 7 as the pulse ! But one short week before, this 
earth could not reveal a lovelier vision : — Virtue blessed, 
affection followed, beauty beamed on her ; the light of 
every eye, the charm of every heart, she moved along 
in cloudless chastity, cheered by the song of love, and 
circled by the splendours she created ! Behold her now, 
the loathsome refuse of an adulterous bed ; festering in 
the very infection of her crime ; the scofF and scorn of 
their unmanly, merciless, inhuman author ! But thus 
it ever is with the votaries of guilt ; the birth of their 
crime is the death of their enjoyment ; and the wretch 
who flings his offering on its altar, fails an immediate 
victim to the flame of his devotion. I am glad it is so ; 
it is a wise, retributive dispensation ; it bears the stamp 
of a preventive Providence. I rejoice it is so, in the 
present instance, first, because this premature infliction 
must ensure repentance in the wretched sufferer 5 and 



76 A SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

next, because, as this adulterous fiend has rather acted 
on the suggestions of his nature than his shape, by re- 
belling against the finest impulse of man, he has made 
himself an outlaw from the sympathies of humanity.— 
Why should he expect that charity from you, which he 
would not spare even to the misfortunes he had inflicted ? 
For the honour of the form in which he is disguised, I 
am willing to hope he was so blinded by his vice, that 
he did not see the fall extent of those misfortunes. If 
he had feelings capable of being touched, it is not to the 
fadeu victim >f her own weakness, and of his wicked- 
ness, that I would direct them. There is something In 
her crime which affrights charity from its commissera- 
tion. Bui, Gentlemen, there is one, over whom pity 
may mourn,— for he is wretched ; and mourn without a 
blush- for he is guiltless. How shall I depict to you 
the deserted husband ? To every other »bject in tins 
catalogue of calamity there is some stain attached which 
checks compassion. ---But here— Oh ! if ever there was 
a man amiable, it was that man. Oh! if ever there was 
a husband fond, it was that husband. His hope, his 
joy, his ambition was domestic ; his toils were forgotten 
in the affections of his home ; and amid every adverse 
variety of fortune, hope pointed to his children ; and he 
was comforted. By this vile act that hope is blasted, 
that house is a desert, those children are parentles; ? In 
vain do tuey look to their surviving parent : his heart is 
broken, his mind is in ruins, his very form is fading 
from the earth. He had one consolation, an aged mo- 
ther, on whose life the remnant of his fortunes hung, 
and on whose protection of his children his remaining 
prospects rested ; even that is over ; - she could not sur- 
vive his shame, she never raised her head, she became 
hearsed in his misfortune ;— -he has followed her funeral. 
If this be not the climax of human misery, tell me in 
what does human misery consist ? Wife, parent, for- 
tune, prospects, happiness,— all gone at once, and gone 
for ever ! For my part, when I contemplate this, I do 
not wonder at the impression it lias produced on him; 
I do not wonder at the faded form, the dejected air, the 
emaciated countenance, and all the luinotis and moul- 
dering trophies, by which misery has marked its tri- 
umph over youth, and health, and happiness 9 I know. 
that in the hordes of what is called fashionable life, there 



GTJTmilE Y. STERNE, 77 

is a sect of philosophers, wonderfully patient of their 
fellow creatures' sufferings ; men too insensible to feel 
for any one, or too selfish to feel for others. I trust 
there is not one amongst you who ran even hear of such 
calamities without affliction ; or, if there be, I pray that 
he may never know their import by experience ; that 
having, in the wilderness of this world, hut one dear 
ai,d darling object, without whose participation bliss 
would be Joyless, and in whose sympathies sorrow has 
found a charm ; whose smile has cheered his toil, whose 
love has pillowed his misfortunes, whose angel-spirit, 
guiding him through danger, and darkness, and des- 
pair, amid the world's frown and the friend's perfidy, 
was more than friend, and world, and all to him ! God 
forbid, that by a villain's wile, or a villain's wickedness, 
he should be taught how to appreciate the wo of others in 
the dismal solitude of his own. Oh, no ! I, feel that I ad- 
dress myself to human beings, w ho, knowing the value 
of what the w 7 orid is worth, are capable of appreciating 
all that makes it dear to us. 

Observe, however, — lest this crime should want ag- 
gravation — observe, I beseech you, the period of its ac- 
complishment. My client was not so young as that the 
elasticity of his spirit could rebound and bear him above 
the pressure of the misfortune, nor was he withered by- 
age into a comparative insensibility ; but just at that 
temperate interval of manhood, when passion had ceased 
to play, and reason begins to operate; when love, grati- 
fied, left him nothing to desire; and fidelity, long tried, 
left him nothing to apprehend : he was just too, at that 
period of his professional career,when, his patient indus- 
try having conquered the ascent, he was able to look a- 
round him from the height on which he rested. For this, 
welcome had been the day of tumult, ami the pale lamp 
succeeding ; welcome bad been the drudgery of form : 
welcome the analysis of crime ; welcome the sneer of en- 
vy, and the scorn of dullness, and all the spurns which 
*< patient merit of the unworthy takes." For this he had 
encountered, perhaps the generous rivalry of genius, per- 
haps the biting hlasts of poverty, perhaps the efforts of 
that deadly slander, which, coiling round the cradle of 
his young ambition, might have sought to crush him in 
its envenomed foldings.. 



rS A SPEECH IN THE CASE 01 

u A;j ! vrhocan tell how hard it is (o climb 

The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar ? 

Ah! who c.4!) tell how many a soul sublime 

Hath felt ih influence of malignant star, 

And waged with fortune an eternal war ?" 

Can such an injury as this admit of justification ? I think 
the learned counsel will conceive it cannot. But it may 
be palliated, JLet u- see how. Perhaps the defendant 
wan young' and thhughtless ; perhaps unmerited prosperi- 
ty raised him above the pressure of misfortune; and the 
wild pulse of impetuous passion impelled him to a pur- 

id which his experience would have shuddered. — 

Quite the conlary. The noon of manhood lias almost 

1 over htm : and a vouth, spent in the recesses of a 

• 's prison, made him familiar with every form of 
human misery: he saw what misfortune was ; — it did 

tedch him pity : he sa i .v the effects of guilt ; — he 
spurned, the aiVmouition. Perhaps in the solitude of a 
, h had never known the social blessedness of 
;— he has a wife* and children ; or if she be not 
his wifu, she is the victim of his crime, and adds another 
t<> tjie calendar of his seduction; Certain it is, he has 
little children, who think themselves legitimate; will his 
advocates defend him, by proclaiming thir bastardy I 
Certain it is, there is a wretched female, his own cousin 

who thinks herself his wife 5 will they protect him, 

tming he has only deceived her into being his 

prostitute ? Perhaps his crime, as in the celebrated case 

immortalized by Lord Erskine t may have 

■ its origin in paren tat cruelty ; it might perhaps 
have been that in their spring of life, when fancy waved 
her fairy wand around them, till all above was sun-shine, 
and all beneath was Bowers ; when to their clear and 
c'h irmed vision this ample world was but a weed less gar-* 
den, where every tint spoke Nature's loveliness, and 
ever}" sound breathed Heaven's melody and every breeze 
was embodied fragrance; it might have been that, in 
this cloudless holiday, Love wove his roseate bondage 
i them, till their young hearts grew together, a se- 
parale existence ceased, and life itself became a sweet 

tity; it might have been that, envious of this para- 

. some worse than demon tore them from each other 
to pi ears in absence, and ^ length to perish in a 

palliated impiety. Oh ! Gentlemen, in such a case, Jus- 



6UTKKI3 V. STER.NE. 

tice herself, with her uplifted sword, would call 
cy to preserve the victim. Th^re was no Such p; 

the period of their acquaintance was little more than 

sufficient for the maturity « f their crime; and t 
not libel Love, by shielding under its soft and s 
name the loathsome revels of an aduitcroi 
It migM have heen, the husband's cruelty h\'t a ton c-a«y 
read for seduction. Will they dare to assert it? Ah! 
too well they knew he would not let u the winds of hea- 
ven visit her face tor) rouerhly." Monstrous as it is, I 
have heard, indeed, that they mean to rest upon an op- 
posite palliation ; I have heard it rumoured, that they 
mean to rest the wile's infidelity upon the husbands* 
Iness. I know that gaili, in i f " conception mean, and 
ii» its commission tremulous, is, i . despe- 

rate and audacious, I know that, inthe fugitive panic 
of its retreat it will stop tolling its Parthan poison upon 
the. justice that pursues it. But 1 do hope, bad aaid aban- 
doned,hopeIess as their cau8eis* — * do hope, for the i 
of human nature, that S have t>een deceived in the ru- 
mors of this unnstural defence. Merciful God ! is it In 
tli >e«eitce of this venerable Court, i hearing 

of till try, is it in the zenith of an c^!?p;!;ti ued 

age, that I am to be told, because female tenderness was 
not watched with worse than Spanish vigilance^ and 
harrassed with worse than eastern severity ; bo< ausethe 
marriage-contract is not converted into the curse of in- 
carceration * because women is allowed the dignity of a 
human sou!, and man does not degrade himself into a hu- 
man monster; because the vow of endearment is not 
made the vehicle of deception, and the altar's pledge is 
not become the passport of a barbarous perjury ; and 
that too in a land of courage and chivalry, where the 
female form has been held as a patent direct from rho 
Divinity, bearing in its chaste and charmed helplessness 
of its strength, and the amulet of its protection : am 1 to 
be told, that the demon adulterer is therefore not ov.ly 
to perpetrae his crimes, but to vindicate himself, through 
the very virtues he has violated? I cannot believe it; } 
dismiss the supposition: it is most "' monstrous, foul, and 
unnatural." •Suppose that the plaintiff pursued a differ- 
ent principle ; suppose, that his conduct had been the re- 
verse of what it was; suppose, that in place of Being 
kind, he had been cruel to this deluded female 5 that he 



gO A SPEECH IN THE CASK OF 

liad been her tyrant, not lier protector ; her gaoler, not 
her husband : what then might have been the defence of 
the adulterer? Might he not then say, and say with 
speciousness, <* True, I seduced her into crime, hut it 
was to save her from cruelty ! true, she is my adultress, 
because he was her despot." Happily, Gentlemen, he 
can say no such thing. I have heard it said, too, du- 
ring the ten months of calumny, for which, by every spe- 
cies of legal delay, they have procrastinated tins trial, 
that, n^xt to the impeachment of the husband's tender- 
ness, they mean to rely on what they libel as the levity 
of their unhappy victim I I know not by what right any 
man, hut above all, a married man, presumes to scruti- 
nize into tbe conduct of a married female. I know not, 
Gentlemen, how you would feel, under the consciousness 
that every coxcomb was at liberty to estimate the warmth, 
or the coolness, of your wives, by th ,v barometer of his 
vanity, that he might ascertain precisely the prudence 
of his invasion on their virtue. But I do know, that such 
a defence, coming from such a quarter, would not at all 
suppnse me. Poor — unfortunate — fallen female! How 
can she expect mercy from her destroyer ? How can she 
expect that he will receive the character he was careless 
of preserving ? How. can she suppose that, that after ha- 
ving made her peace the pander to his appetite, he will 
not make hep reputation the victim of his avarice? Such 
a defence is quite to be expected : knowing him, it will 
not surprise me ; if I know you, it will not avail him. 

Having now shown you, that a crime almost unprece- 
dented in this country, is clothed in every aggravation, 
and robbed of every palliative, it is natural you should 
inquire, what was the motive for its commission? What 
&o you think it was? Providentially — miraculously,! 
should have said, for you never could have divined— the 
Defendant has himself disclosed it. What do you think 
it was, Gentlemen? Ambition! But a few days before 
his criminality, in answer to a friend, who rebuked him 
for the almost princely expenditure of his habits, <• Oh*' 
s,?ys he, '• never mind ; Sterne must do something by 
which Sterne may hv, known /" ! had heard, indeed, that 
ambition was a vice,— but then a vice, so •equivocal, it 
sjed oji virtue; that it was the aspiration of a spirit, 
times perhaps appalling, always magnificent; that 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE. 81 

though its grasp might be fate,, and its flight might be 
famine* still it reposed on earth's pinnacle, and played 
in heaven's lightnings ; that though it might fall in ruins, 
it arose in fire, and was withal so splendid, that even the 
horrors of that full became iin merged and mitigated in 
tSie beauties of that aberration ! But here is an ambi- 
tion-- base and barbarous and illegitimate; with ail the 
grossness of the vice, with none of the grandeur of the 
Virtue ; a mean, muffled, dastard incendiary, who, in 
silence of sleep, and in shades of midnight, steals bis 
Ephesian torch into the fane, which h was virtue to 
adore, and worse than sacrilege to have violated ! 

Gentlemen, my part is done ; yours is about to com- 
mence. You have heard this crime, its origin, its pro- 
gress, its aggravations, its novelty among us. Go and 
tell your children and your country, whether or not it 
is to be made a precedent Oh, how awful is your re- 
sponsibility ! I do not doubt that you will discharge 
yourselves of it as becomes your characters. J am sure, , 
indeed, that you will mourn with me over the almost 
solitary defect in our otherwise matchless system of ju- 
risprudence, which leaves the perpetrators of such an 
injury as this, subject to no amercement but that of mo- 
ney. I think you will lament the failure of the great Ci- 
cero of our age, to bring such an offence within the cog- 
nisance of a criminal jurisdiction : it was a subject suit- 
ed to Isis legislative mind, worthy of his feeling hearty 
worthy of ills immortal eloquence. I cannot, my Lord, 
even remotely allude to Lord Erskine, without gratify- 
ing myself by saying of him, that by the rare union of 
all that was learned in law with all that was lucid in elo- 
quence ; by the singular combination of all that was 
pure; morals with all that was profound in wisdom $ 
he has stamped upon every action of his life the blended 
authority of a great mind, and an unquestionable con- 
viction. 1 think, Gentlemen, you will regret the fail- 
ure of such a man in such an object. The merciless 
murderer may have manliness to plead ; the highway 
robber may have want to palliate; yet they both are ob- 
jects of criminal infliction : but the murderer of connu- 
bial bliss, who commits his crime in secrecy ; — the rob- 
ber of domestic joys, whose very wealth, as in this casc^ 
may be his instrument; — he is suffered to calculate on 
iUa interna! fame which a superfluous and unXelt expen- 



82 SPEECH IX Tffk CASE OF 

diturc may purchase. The law, however, is so : and 
we must only adopt the remedy it affords us. In our ad- 
judication of that remedy, I do not ask too much, when 
I ask the full extent of your capability : how poor, even 
so, is the wretched remuneration for an injury which 
nothing can repair, — for a loss which nothing can alle. 
viate ? Do you think that a mine could recompense my 
client for the forfeiture of her who was dearer than life 
to him ? 

" Oh*, had she been but true, 
Though heaven had made him such another ivorid, 
Ot one entire and perfect chrysolite, 
He'd not exchange her for it." 

I put it to any of you, what would you take to stand 
in his situation ? What would you take to have your pros- 
pect blasted, your profession despoiled, your peace ruin- 
ed, your bed profaned, your parents heart-broken, your 
children parentless? Believe me, Gentlemen, if it were 
not for those children, he would not come here to day to 
seek such remuneration ; if it were not that, by your ver- 
dict, you nay prevent those little innocent defrauded 
wretches from wandering beggars, as well as orphans, 
on the face of this earth. Oh, I know I need not ask 
this verdict from your mercy ; I need not extort it from 
your compassion; I will receive it from your justice. I 
do conjure you, not as fathers, but as husbands;- -not 
as husbands, but as citizens ; — not as citizens, but as 
men; — not as men, but as Christians; — by all your 
obligations, public, moral, and religious ; by the heart 
profaned; by the home desolated ; by the canons of the 
living God foully spurned; — save, oh ! save vour fire- 
sides from the contagion, your country from the crime, 
and perhaps thousands, yet unborn, from the shame, and 
sorrow of this example ! 



SHHSBftDIH 



OF 



MR. PHILLIPS, 

IS 

-C&e €a$t of <©'«jiBuflatt to. JlE'StoiMt. 

DELIVERED IN 

THE COUNTY COURT-HOUSE, GALWAY. 



My Lords and Gentlemen, 

I am instructed, as of counsel for the Plaintiff, to 
state to you the circumstances in which this action has 
originated. It is a source to me, I will confess it, of 
much personal embarrassment. Feebly, indeed, can I 
attempt to convey to yoH, the feelings with which 
a perusal of this brief has affected me ; painful to 
you must be my inefficient transcript — painful to all who 
have the common feelings ol country or of kind, must 
be the calamitous compendium of all that degrades our 
indivdual nature, and of all that has, for many an age 
of sorrow, perpetuated a curse upon our national cha- 
racter. It is, perhaps, the misery of this profession, 
that every hour our vision may be blasted by some wi- 
thering crime, aud our hearts wrung with some agonizing 



84 SPEECH 1ST THE CASE OF 

rental ; there is no frightful form of vice, or no dis- 
gusting phantom of infirmity; which guilt does not array 
in spectral train before us. Horrible is Ihe assembl, 
humiliating the application i but, thank God, even amid 
those very scenes of disgrace and debasement, occasions 
oft arise for the redemption of our dignity; occasions, 
on which the virtues breathe-! into us, by heavenly in- 
spiration, walk abroad in the divinity oj" their exertion; 
befoVe whose beam the wintry robe falls from the form 
of virtue, and all the images of horror vanish into no- 
thing. Joyfully and piously do I recognise such an oc- 
casion ; gladly do f invoke you to the generous partici- 
pation ; yes, gentlemen, though you must prepare to hear 
much that degrades our nature, much that 
our country — though all that oppression could devise 
against the poor — though all that persecution could in- 
flict upon the feeble — though all that vice could v 
against the pious— thoygh all that the venom of a Venal 
turpitude could pour upon the patriot, must with their 
alternate apparition aOlict, affright, and humiliate you, 
still do I hope, that over this charnel-house of crime--- 
over this very sepulchre, where corruption sits enthron- 
ed upon the merit it has murdered, that voice is at length 
about to be heard, at which the martyred victim will 
arise to vindicate the ways of Providence, and prove 
that even in its worst adversity there is a might and im- 
mortality in virtue. 

The Plaintiff, Gentlemen, you have heard, is the 
Rev. Cornelius O'Mullan ; he is a clergyman of the 
church of Rome, and became invested with that venera- 
ble appellation, so far back as September, 1804. It is 
a title which yon know, in this country, no rank enno- 
bles, no treasure enriches, no establishment supports ; 
its possessor stands undisguised by any rag of this 
world's decoration, resting all temporal, all eternal hope 
upon his toil, his talents, his attainments, and his piety 
— doubtless after ai!, the highest honours, as well as 
the most imperishable treasures of the man of God. — 
Year after year passed over my client, and each anni- 
versary only gave him an additional title to these quali- 
fications. His precept was but the handmaid to his 
practice ; the sceptic heard him, and was convinced ; 
the ignorant attended him, and were taught; he smooth- 
ed the death-bed of loo .heedless wealth : he rocked the 



o'MULLAK V, M*KOKK.fXl-. 85 

•radio of the infant charity; oh. no wonder he walked 
in the sunshine of the public ; *e*;e, no wonder he toiled 
through the pressure of the \mh\*v benediction. This is 
not an idle declamation ; such >$£f the result his minis- 
try produced, that within five years from the date of its 
commencement, nearly 2000'. of voluntary subscription 
enlarged the temple where such precepts were taught* 
and such piety exemplified . Such was the situation *4 
Mr. Q'Miittan, when a dissolution of parliament took 
place? and an unexpected contest for the represenffctjfin 
of Derry, threw that county info unusual com root km. 
One of tire candidates was of the Ponson^y family — a fa- 
mily devoted to the interests * and dear to the heart of Ire- 
land; he naturally thought that his parliamentary con- 
duct entitled him to the vote of every Catholic in the 
land; and so it t?,n\ 9 not only of every Qatholicj but qf 
every Christian who preferred the diffusion <i th;> Gos- 
pel to the ascendancy of a sect, and loved the principles 
of the constitution better than the pretensions of a party. 
Perhaps you will think with me, that there is a sorl of 
posthumous interest thrown about that evenj, when i 
tell you, that the candidate on (hat occasion was the la- 
mented Hero over whose tomb t!»e tears, not only of 
Ireland, but of Europe, have been so lately shed ; he 
who, mid the blossom of the world's chivalry, died con- 
quering a deathless name upon the field of Waterloo. He 
applied to Mr. O'Mullan for his interest, and that inte- 
rest was cheerfully given, the concurrence of his bishop 
having been previously obtained. Mr. Fonsonby suc- 
ceeded ; and a dinner, to which all parties were invited 
and from which all party spirit was expected to absent 
itself, was given to commemorate one common triumph 
— the purity and the privileges of election. In other 
countries, such an expectation might be natural ; the 
exercise of a noble constitutional privilege, the triumph 
of a great popular cause, might not unaptly expand it- 
self in the intercourse of the board, and unite all hearts 
in the natural bond of festive commemoration. But, 
alas, Gentlemen, in this unhappy land, such has been 
the result, whether of our faults, our follies, or our mis- 
fortunes, that a detestable disunion converts the very 
balm of the howl into poison, commissioning its vile and 
harpy offspring,, to turn even our festivity into famine. 
My client was at this dinner; it was not to he endured 



86 SrEECU IX THE CASE OF 

that a Catholic should pollute with his presence, the ci- 
vic festivities of the loyal Londonderry ! such an intru- 
sion, even the acknowledged sanctity of his character 
could not excuse ; it became necessary to insult him. 
There is a toast, which, perhaps, few in this united 
country are in the habit of hearing, but it is the invari 
able watchword of the Orange orgies; it is briefly en- 
titled «« The glorious, pious, and immortal memory of 
the great and good King William." I have no doubt the 
simplicity of your understandings is puzzled how to dis- 
cover any offence in the commemoration of the Revolu- 
tionary Hero. The loyalists of Derry are more wise in 
their generation. There, when some bacchanalian bi- 
gots wish to avert the intrusive visitations of their own 
memory, they commence by violating the memory of King 
William*. Those who happen to have shoes or silver in 
their fraternity — oo very usual occurrence—thank His 
Majesty that the shoes are not wooden, and that the silver 
is not brass, a commodity, by the bye, of which any le- 
gacy would have been quite superfluous. The pope comes 
in for a pious benediction; and th* toast concludes with 
a patriotic wish, for all his persuasion, by the communi- 
cation of which, there can be no doubt the hempen manu- 
factures of this country would experience a ^ery consi- 
derable consumption. Such, Gentlemen, is the enlight- 
ened, and libera*, and social sentiment of which the first 
sentence, all that is usually give , firms the suggestion. 
I must not om t tl at ijt is generally »aken standing, always 
providing it be in the power of the company. This toast 
was pointedly given to insult Mr. O'Mullan. Naturally 
averse to any alteration, his most obvious course was to 
cjuit the company, and this he did immediately. He was 
however, as immediately recalled by an intimation, that 
the Catholic question, and might its claims be consider- 

* This loyal toast handed down by Orange tradition, is lite- 
rally as follows : we give it ior the edification of the sister 
island. 

" The glorious, pious, and immortal memory of the great and 
good Kms William, who saved us from Pope and Popery, 
James and slavery, brass money and wooden shoes ; here is bad 
luck to the Pope, and a hempen rope to all Papists " 

it is drank kneeling, if they cannot stand, nine times nine, 
amid various mysteries which none but the elect can compre- 
hend. 



0'Mn.LAN v. m'korkilx. sr 

od justly and liberally, had been toasted as a peace-offer- 
ing by Sir George Hill, the City Recorder. JViy client 
had no gall in his disposition ,• He at once clasped to his 
heart the friendly overture, and in such phrase as his 
simplicity supplied, poured forth the gratitude ot that 
heart to the liberal recorded. Poor U'AIullan had the 
wisdom to imagine that the politician's compliment was 
the man's conviction, and that a table toast was the cer- 
tain prelude to a pailiamentary suffrage. Despising all 
experience, he applied the adage, Calnm non dnimum 
mutant qui trans marc currant, to the Irish patriot. I 
need not paint to you the consternation of Sir Geoge, 
at so unusual and so unparliamentary a construction. He 
indignantly disclaimed the intention imputed to him, de- 
nied and deprecated the unfashionable inference, and 
acting on the broad scale of an impartial policy, ga\e to 
one party the weight of his vote, and to the other, the 
(no doubt in his opinion) equally valuable acquisition of 
his eloquence ; — by the way, no unusual compromise 
amongst modern politicians. 

Tht proceedings of this dinner soon became public, Sir 
George you may be sure, was little in love with his no- 
toriety. However, Gentlemen, the sufferings of the pow- 
erful are seldom without sympathy; if they receive not 
the solace of the disinterested and the sincere, they are 
at least sure to find a substitute in the miserable profes- 
sions of an interested hypocrisy. Who could imagine, 
that Sir George, of all men, was to drink from the spring 
of Catholic consolation ? yet so it happened. Two men 
of that communion had the hardihood and the servility, 
to frame an address to him, reflecting upon the pastor, 
-who was its pride, and its ornament, i his address, with 
the most obnoxious commentaries, was instantly publish- 
ed by the Derry Journalist, who from thai hour, down 
to the period of his ruin, has never ceased to persecute 
my client, with all that the most deliberate falsehood 
could invent, and all that the most infuriate bigotry 
could perpetrate. This journal, I may as well now des- 
cribe to you ; it is one of the numerous publications which 
the misfortunes of this unhappy lard have generated, and 
which has grown into considerable ailluenee by the saU 
contributions of the public calamity. There is not -<\ 
provincial village in Ireland, which some such ofiicia' 
fiend does not infest, fabricating a gazette of fraud and 



38 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

falsehood, upon all who presume to advocate her inter- 
ests, c»s- uphold th* 1 ancient religion of her people; — Lhe 
worse foes of government upojii pretence of giving it as- 

tnce ; the deadliest enemies to the Irish name, under 
.In-, mockery of supporting its character; the most licen- 
tious, irreligious, illiterate banditti, that ever polluted 
the of literature, mid foliated baunei of 

the pi d with the public spoil, and blooded 

in tlie chase of character, no abilities can arrest, no piety 
can a.ve; no misfortune affect, no benevolence conciliate 

n : the reputation of the living, and the memory of 
the dead are equal^ plundered in their desolating pro- 

? ,* i-\eii the awful sepulchre affords not an as>Ium 
to their selected victim. Human Hyexas ! they will rush 
into toe sacred receptacle of death, gorging their raven- 
ous and brutal rapine, amid the memorials of our last in- 
v ' Surit is a too true picture of what I hope uiiau- 
v misnames itself 'he ministerial press of Ireland. 

d that polluted press, it is for you to say, whether 
The Lbiidonderry Journal stands on an infamous ele\ a- 
lion. Vv hen tins address was published in the name of 
the Catholics, that calumniated body, as was naturally 
to be expected, became utih ersally indignant. 

You may remember, Gentlemen, amongst the many 

dieuts resorted to by Ireland, lor the recovery of 
her rights, alter she had knelt session afier session at 
the bar ut the legislature, covered with the wounds of 
gmry, and 'praying redemption from the chains that re- 

^ca them ; — you may remember, 1 say, amongst ma- 
ny vain expedients of supplication and rcmonstration, 
her Catholic population delegated a board to consult on 
their affairs, and forward their petition. Of that body, 
fashionable as the topic has now become, far be it from 

lb speak with disrespect, it contained much talent, 
much integrity ; and it exhibited what must ever be to 
ing spectacle, a great body of my leliow- 
men, and fellow- christians, claiming admission into that 
constitution winch their ancestors had achieved by their 
valour, and to which they were entitled as their inheri- 
tance. This is no time, this is no place for the discus- 
sion of that question j but since it does forre itself inci- 
dentally upon me, 1 will sa) , that as on the one ban 

;t fancy a despotism more infamous, or more inhu- 
man, ment here, on account of 



©'AlULLAN V. M'KORKILL. 89 

that faith by which men hope to win an happy eternity 
hereafter ; so on the other, I cannot fancij a visionin its 
aspect more divine than the eternal cross, red with the 
Martyr's blood, and radiant with the Pilgrim's hope, 
reared by the Patrigt and the Christian hand high in the 
van of universal liberty. Of this hoard the two volun- 
teer framers of the address happened to be members. — 
The body who deputed them, instantly assembled and 
declared their delegation void. You would suppose, 
Gentlemen, that after this derisive public brand of repro- 
bation, those officious meddlers would have avoided ita 
recurrence, by retiring from scenes for which nature 
and education had totally unfitted them. Far, however, 
from acting under any sense of shame, those excluded out- 
casts even summoned a meeting to appeal from the sen- 
tence the public opinion had pronounced on then). The 
meeting assembled, and after almost the day's delibera- 
tion on their conduct, the former sentence was unani- 
mously confirmed. The men did not deem it prudent to 
attend themselves, but at a late h»ur, when the business 
was concluded, when the resolutions had passed, when 
the chair was vacated, when the multitude was dispers- 
ing, they attempted with some Orange followers to ob- 
trude into the chapel, which in large cities, such as 
Derry, is the usual place of meeting. An angry spirit 
arose among the people. Mr. O'Mullan, as was his du- 
ty, locked the doors to preserve the house of God from 
profanation, and addressed the crowd in such terms, as 
induced them to repair peaceably to their respective ha- 
bitations. I need not paint to you the bitter emotions 
with which these deservedly disappointed men were agi- 
tated. AH hell was at work within them, and a conspi- 
racy was hatched against the peace of my client, the 
vilest, the foulest, the most infernal that ever vice devis- 
ed, or demons executed. Restrained from exciting a 
riot by his interference, they actually swore a riot a- 
gainst him, prosecuted him to conviction, worked on 
the decaying intellect of his bishop to desert him, and 
amid the savage war-hoop of this slanderous Journal, 
all along inflaming the public mind by libels the moat 
atrocious, finally flung this poor, religious, unoffending 
priest, into a damp and desolate dungeon, where the ve- 
ry iron that bound, had more of humanity than the des- 
pots that surrounded him. I am told, they triumph 

M 



90 . SPEECH IX THE CA9E OF 

much in this conviction. I seek ni t to impugn the ver- 
dict of that jury : | have . »i doubt they act«*d conscien- 
tiously. It weighs not with me that every member of 
mv rlients's rreed was carefulb pxcloded from that ju- 
v\~ no doubt they acted tonscientimtsltj. It \\ « i s* I » s not 
with me tliat every man impanelled on the trial of the 
priest, was exclusively Protestant, and that, too, in a 
city, so-prejudiced, that not long ago, by their Corpo- 
ration law, no Catholic dan* breath the air of Bea en 
within its walls— no doubt they acted conscientiously. It 
weighs not with me, that not three days previously, one 
of that jury was heard publicly to declare, he wished he 
coukl persecute the Papist to his death — no doubt they 
acted conscientiously. It weighs not with me, that the 
public mind had been so inflamed by th<- exasperation of 
this libeller, that an impartial trial was utterly int|>ossi- 
hle. Let them enjoy their triumph. But for myself, 
knowing him ay I do, here in the teeth of that ronvic- 
tion, I declare it, I would rather he that man, so asper- 
sed, so persecuted, and have his consciousness, than 
stand the highest of th^ courtliest rabble that e\er 
crouched before the foot of power, or (ei\ upon the peo- 
ple — plundered alms of despotism. Oh, of short dura- 
tion is such demoniac triumph. Oh, blind and ground- 
is the hope of vice, imagining its victory can he 
more than foe the moment. This \k-iy day I hope will 
prove, that if virtue suffers, it is but for a season : and 
that sooner or later, their patience tried, and their pu- 
-sperity will crown the interests of pro. 
and worth. 
Perhaps you imagine. Gentlemen, that his person im- 
prisoned, his profession gone, his prospects ruined, and 
he held dearer than all, his character defamed; 
malice of his ene ies might have rested from j 

•* Thus had begins, hut worse remains behind." 
nd, I beseech y u» to \*hat now follows, because I 
fume in order, to the particular libel, which we 
<i from the innumerable calumnies of this 
Journal, and to which we rail your political consid era- 
Business of moment*, to the nature of which. I 
• d ■. : resently to advert, ra'.le'd Mr. 
in to the metropolis. Through the libels of the 
ndant, he was at this time i;i disfavour with his 
^\ni a rumour had gone abroad, that he was not 



o'mulian v. m'korkill. 91 

ever again to revisit his ancient congregation. TU Bishop 
in the interim returned to Derry, and on the Sunday 
foJJnwing, wen to officiate at the Parish chapel. AM 
ranks crowded tremulously round him; the wWow 
sought her guardian ; the orphan his protector ; the 
poor their patron; rhe rich their guide; the ignorant 
their pastor ; all, ail, with one voice, demanded his re- 
Gal, by whose absent e the graces, the charities, the 
virtues of life, were left orphans in their communion. 
Can you imagine a more interesting spectacle ? The hu- 
man mind never conceived-** the human hand never de- 
picted a more iutructive or delightful picture. Yet will 
you believe it! out of this very circumstance, the De- 
fendant fabri'ated the most audacious, and if possible, 
the most cruel of his Libels. Hear his words :— 
« ()'Mullan, M says In-, " was convicted and degraded, 
for assaulting bis own Bishop, and the Recorder of Der- 
ry, in the paris j r.ha > d ! M Obs rve the disgusting ma- 
lign ty of the Lhel — >bs>rve the crowded damnation 
which it accumulates on my client— observe all tfie ag- 
gravated crime which it embrace*. First, he assaults 
his venerable Bishop —the great Ecrlesiastical Patron, 
to whom he was sworn to be obedient, and against whom 
he never conceived or articulated irreverence. Next, he 
assaults the Sic order of Derry— a Privy Counsellor, 
the supreme municipal authority of the city. And v. here 
does foe do so? Gracious God, in the very templevof 
thy worship ! That is. says the inhuman Libell-r— -he 
a citizen— he. a cl rgyman insulted not only the civil but 
th* ecclesiastical authorities* in the face of man, and in 
the house of prayer; trampling •ontumeliousiy upon all 
hu nan law ami I th • sacred altars, where he believed 
th" M nignty witnessed the profanation ! I am so hor- 
ror stru k at this blasphemous and abominable turpi- 
tude, I can scarcely proceed. What will you say, Gen- 
tlemen, when I inform you, that at the very time this 
atrocity was imputed to him, he was in the city of Dub- 
lin, at a distance of 120 miles from the venue of its 
commission! But oh ! when calumay once begins its 
work, how vain are 'he u» pediments of time and dis- 
tance ! Before the sirocco of its breath all nature wi- 
thers, and age, and sex, and innocence, and station, 
perish in the unseen, but certain desolation of its pro- 
gress ! Do you wonder U'Mullan sunk before these ac- 



92 SPEECH IW THE CASE 0¥ 

cumulated calumnies ; do you wonder the feeble were in- 
timidated, the wavering decided, the prejudiced confirm- 
ed ? He was forsaken by his Bishop ; he was denoun- 
ced by his enemies — his very friends fled in consterna. 
tion from the " stricken deer ;" he was banished from 
the scenes of his childhood, from the endearments of his 
youth, from the field of his fair and honourable ambi- 
tion. In vain did he resort to strangers for subsistence; 
on the very wings of the wind, the calumny preceded 
him ; and from that hour to this, a too true apostle, he 
has been " a man of sorrows," « not knowing whereto 
lay his head." I will not appeal to your passions ; 
alas ! how inadequate am I to depict his sufferings ; you 
must take them from the evidence. I have told you, that 
at the time of those infernally fabricated libels, the 
Plaintiff was in Dublin, and I promised to advert to the 
cause by which his absence was occasioned. 

Observing in the course of his parochial duties, the 
deplorable, I had almost said the organized ignorance of, 
the Irish peasantry — an ignorance whence all their crimes 
and most of their sufferings originate ; observing also, that 
there was no publicly established literary institution to 
relieve them, save only to the charter-schools, which ten- 
dered learning to the faith of his fathers; he determined 
if passible to gi\c them the lore of this world, without of- 
fering as a mortgage upon the inheritance of t lie next. 
He framed the prospectus of a srhool, for the education 
of five hundred children, and went to the metropolis to 
obtain subscriptions for the purpose. I need not descant 
upon the great general advantage, or to this country the. 
peculiarly patriotic consequences, which the success of 
such a plan must have produced. INo doubt, you have 
all personally considered— no doubt, you have all person- 
ally experienced, that of all the blessings which it hath 
pleased Providence to allow us to cultivate, there is not 
one which breathes a purer fragrance, or bears a heaven- 
lie? aspect than education. It is a companion which no 
misfortunes can depress, no clime destroy, no enemy ali- 
enate, no despotism enslave ; at home a friend, abroad an 
introduction, in solitude a solace, in society an ornament ; 
it chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once a grace 
and government to genius. Without it, what is man ? A 
splendid slave! a reasoning savage, vacillating between 
the dignity of an intelligence derived from God, and the 



O'MLIXAN V. m'EXRKILI,. 9^ 

depredation of passions participated with brutes; and in 
the accident of their alternate ascendam y shuddering at 
the terrors of an hereafter, or embracing the horrid hop. 
•fannihiliation. What is this wondrous world of ms re. 

sidence ? 

A mighty maze, and all without a plan ; 

a dark and desolate and dreary cavern, without wealth, or 
ornament or order. But light up within ft the torch of 
knowledge, and how wondrous the transition ! lhe sea- 
sons change, the atmosphere breathes, the landscape 
lives, earth unfolds its fruits, ocean rolls in its magnifi- 
cence, the heavens display their constellated canopy, and 
the grand animated spectacle of nature rises retealed be- 
fore him, its varieties regulated, and its mysteries resolv- 
ed ! The phenomena which bewilder, the prejudices 
which debase, the superstitions which enslave, vanish be- 
fore education. Like the holy symbol which blazed up- 
on the cloud before the hesitating Conatantine, if man 
follow but its precepts, purely, it will not only lead him 
to the victories of this world, but open the very portals 
of Omnipotence for his admission. Cast your eye over 
the monumental map of ancient grandeur, erne studded 
with the stars of empire, and the splendours of philoso- 
phy. What erected the little state of Athens into a pow- 
erful commonwealth, placing in her hand lhe sceptre of 
legislation, breathing round her brow the imperishable 
chaplet of literary fantc2 what extended Rome, the haunt 
of a banditti, into universal empire? what animated 
Sparta with that high unbending adamantine courage., 
which conquered nature hers, if, and has fixed her in the 
sight of future ages, a model of public virtue, and a pro- 
verb of national independence? WJiat but those wise 
public institutions which strengthened their minds with 
earlv application, informed their infancy with the prin- 
ciples of action, and sent them into the world, too vigi- 
lant to he deceived b) its calms, and too vigorus to be 
shaken by its whirlwinds ? But surelj , if there be a peo- 
ple in the* world, to whom the blessings of education are 
peculiarlv applicable, it is the Irish people. Lively, ar- 
dent, intelligent, and sensitive; nearly all their acts 
spring from impulse, and no matter how that impulse be 
given, it is immediately adopted, and the adoption and 



94 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

the execution are identified. It is this principle, if prin- 
ciple it ran he rail d, which renders Ireland, alternately, 
the poorest and proudest country in the world; now 
chaining her in the verv abyss of crime, now lifting her 
to the very pinnacle of glorj ; which in the poor, prosrrib- 
ed. peasant Catholic, crowds tb» gaol and feeds the gib- 
b^t; which in the more fortunate, because more educated 
Protestant, lends victory a captive at her car, and holds 
echo mute at he** eloquence ; making a national monopoly 
of fame, and, as it Were, attempting to naturalize the a- 
chieveraentv of the universe. In order that this libel may 
want no possible aggravation, the defendant published it 
when my client was absent on this work of patriotism ; 
be published it when he was absent ; he published it when 
he was absent on a work of virtue; and he published it 
on all the authority of his local knowledge, when that 
very local knowledge must have t<dd him, that it was 
destitute of the shadow of a foundation. Can you ima- 
gine a more odious complication of all that is deliberate 
In malignity, and ail that is depraved in crime? I pro- 
mised. Gentlemen, that I would not harrow your hearts, 
by exposing all that agonizes mine, in the contemplation 
of individual suffering. There is. however, one subject 
connected with this trial, public in its nature, and uni- 
versal in its interest, which imperiously calls for an ex- 
emplary verdict; I mean the liberty of the press — a theme 
which I approach with mingled sensations of awe, and 
ag »ny, and admiration. Considering all that we too 
fatally have seen — all that, perhaps, too fearfully we 
may have cause to apprehend, I feel myself cling to that 
residuary safeguard, with an affection no temptations 
can seduce, with a suspicion no anodyne can lull, with a 
fortitude that peril but infuriates. In the direful retro- 
spect of experimental despotism, and the hideous pros- 
pect of its possible re animation, I clasp it with the des- 
peration of a widowed female, who in the dessnlation of 
bet- house, and the destruction of her household, hurries 
the last of her offspring through the flames, at once the 
relic f her j<»y, the depository of her wealth, and the 
remembrancer of her happiness. It is the duty of us all 
to guard strictly this inestimable privilege — a privilege 
which can never be destroyed, save by the licentiousness 
of those who willingly abuse it. J\o. it is not in the ar- 
ragance oj'powei ; no, it is not in the artifices of law : no. 



O'MULLAN V. m'KORKTLL. 95 

it is not in the fatuity &f princes; no, it is not in the ve- 
nality of parliament to crush, this mighty* this majestic pri- 
vilege': reviled, it will remonstrate; murdtieu, it wiH 
revive; buried, it will re-ascend; the very attempt at 
its oppression will prove the truth of its moMuli y i nH Ike 
atom that presumed to spurn, will fade away before the 
trumpet of its retribution! Man holds it an the saint' prin- 
ciple that he dees his soul ; the power* of this world can- 
not prevail against it ; it can only perish through its own 
depravity. What then shall he his fate through whose 
instrumentality it is sacrificed ! Nay more, what should 
be his fate, who, instructed with the guardianship of its 
security, becomes the traitorous accessary To its ruin ? 
Nay more, what shall be his fate, by whom its powers, de- 
legated foi the public good, aie romerted into the cala- 
mities of private virtue ; against whom, industry denoun- 
ced, merit undermined, morals calumniated, piety aspers- 
ed, all through the means confided for then- protection, 
cry aloud for \eng< a* c ? \> hat shall be h^s fate ? Oh. I 
would hold such a monster, so protected, so sanctified, 
and so sinning, as I would some demon*, who going forth 
consecrated, in the name of the Dei?y. the b«ok of life on 
his lip*, and the dagger of death beneath his robe, awaits 
the sigh of piety, as the signal of plunder, at. d umeins 
the heart's blood of confiding adoration. Should not such 
a case as this require some palliation ? Is there any ? Per- 
haps the defendant might have been misled as to circum- 
stances ? No, he li\eil upon the spot, and had the best 
possible information. Do you think he believed in the 
truth of the publication ? No; he knew that in every 
syllable it was hs false as perjury. Do you think that 
an anxiety for the Catholic community might have in- 
flamed him against the imaginary dereliction of its ad- 
vocate? No ; the very essence of his Journal is preju- 
dice. Do you think that in the ardour of liberty he 
might have venially transgressed its boundaries? No 3 
in every line he licks the sores, awl pampers the pesti- 
lence of authority. I do hot ask you to be stoics in your 
investigation. If you can discover in this libel one mo- 
tive inferential!? moral, one single virtue which he has 
plundered and misapplied, give him its benefit. 1 will 
not demand such an effort of your faith, as to imagine, 
that his northern constitution could, by any miracle be 
fired into the admirable b«t mistaken energv of enth?i- 



96 SPEECH IN THE CASE or 

siasm ; — that he could for one moment have felt the inspi- 
red phrenzy of those loftier spirits, who, under some dar- 
ing but divine delusion, rise into the arch of an ambition 
so bright, so baneful, yet so beauteous, as leaves the 
world in wonder whether it should admire or mourn — 
whether it should weep or worship ! No ; you will not 
only search in vain for such a palliative, but you will find 
this publication springing from the most odious origin, 
and disfigured by the most foul accomplishments, found- 
ed in a bigotry at which hell rejoices, crouching with 
a sycophancy at which flattery blushes, deformed by a 
falsehood at which perjury would hesitate, and to crown 
the climax of its crowded infamies, committed under the 
sacred shelter of the Press ; as if this false, slanderous, 
sycophantic slave, could uot assassinate private worth 
without pointing public privilege ; as if he could not sa- 
crifice the character of the pious without profaning the 
protection of the free ; as if he could not poison learning, 
liberty, and religion, unless he filled his chalice from the 
very fount whence they might have expected to derive the 
waters of their salvation ! 

Now 7 , Gentlemen, as to the measure of your dama- 
ges : — You are the best judges on that subject ; though, 
indeed, I have been asked, and I heard the question 
with some surprize, — why it is that we have brought 
this case at all to be tried before yon. To that I might 
give at once an unobjectionable answer, namely, that 
the law allowed us. But I will deal much more candid- 
ly with you. We brought it here, because it was as far 
as possible from the scene of prejudice ; because no pos- 
sible partiality could exist; because, in this happy and 
united county, less of the bigotry which distracts the rest 
of Ireland exists, than in any other with which we are 
acquainted; because the nature of the action, which we 
ha\e mercifully brought in place of a criminal prosecu- 
tion, — the usual course pursued in the present day, at 
least against the independent press of Ireland, — gives 
them, if we have it, thr power of proving a justification ; 
and I perceive they have emptied half the north here for 
the purpose. But I cannot anticipate an objection, which 
no doubt shall not be made. If this habitual libeller 
should characteristically instruct his counsel to hazard 
it, that learned gentleman is much too wise to adopt it, 
and must know you much too well to insult you by its 



o'&HJLLABT v. m'kobkill. 97 

utterance. What damages, then, Gentlemen, can yon 
give ? I am content to leave the defendant's crimes alto- 
gether out of the question, but how can you recompence 
the sufferings of my client ? Who shall estimate the 
cost of priceless reputation — that impress which gives 
this human dross its currency, without which we stand 
despised, debased, depreciated ? Who shall repair it 
injured ? Who can redeem it lost ? Oh ! well and truly 
does the great philosopher of poetry esteem the world's 
wealth as " trash" in the comparison. Without it, gold 
has no value, birth no distinction, station no dignity, 
beauty no charm, age no reverence ; or, should I not ra- 
ther say, without it every treasure impoverishes, every 
grace deforms, every dignity degrades, and all the arts, 
the decorations, and accomplishments of life, stand, like 
the beacon-blaze upon a rock, warning the world that 
its approach is danger — that its contact is death. The 
wretch without it is under an eternal quarentine; * ne 
friend to greet ; no home to harbour him. The voyage 
of his life becomes a joyless deril; and in the midst of 
all ambition can achieve, or avarice amass, or rapacity 
plunder, ho tosses on the surge, a buoyant pestulencef 
But, Gentlemen, 1ft me not degrade into th© selfishness 
of individual safety, or individual exposure, this univer- 
sal principle : it testifies a higher, a more ennobling ori- 
gin. Jt is this which, consecrating the humble circle of 
the heart, will at times extend itself t^> the circumference 
of the horizon; which nerves the arm of the patriot to 
save his country ; which lights the lamp of the philoso* 
pher to amend man: which, if it does not inspire, will 
yet invigorate the martyr to meiit immortality ,• which, 
when one world's agony is passed and tin glory of ano- 
ther is dawning, will promp< the prophet, even in his 
chariot of fire, and in his vision of h- aven, to bequeath 
tti mankind the mantle of his memory ! Oh divine, oh de- 
lightful legacy of a spotless reputation ! Rich is the in- 
heritance it leaves ; pious the example it testifies ; pure. 
precious, and imperishable, the hope which it inspires ] 
Can you conceive a more atrocious injury tban to filch 
from its possessor this inestimable benefit; to rob society 
of its charm, and solitude of its soiace; net only to out 
Saw life, but to attain death, converting the very grave, 
the refuge of the sufi'erer, into the gate of infamy and of 
ej 1 can conceive few crimes beyond it He wh* 



98 SPEECH IS THE CASE OF 

plunders my property takes from me that which can be 
repaired by time : but what period can repair a ruioed 
reputation ? He who maims my person affects that which 
medicine may remedy : but what herb has sovereignty 
over the wounds of slander? He who ridicules my pover- 
ty, or reproaches my profession, upbraids me with that 
which industry may retrieve, and integrity may purify; 
but wl at riches shall redeem the Bankrupt fame t what 
power shall blanch the sullied snow of character? Can. 
there be an injury more deadly ? Can there be, a crime 
more cruel? It is without remedy — it is without anti- 
dote — it is without evasion ! The reptile calumny is 
ever on the watch. From the fascination of its eye no 
activity can escape ; from the venom of its fang no sani- 
ty can recover. It has no enjoyment but crime; it has 
tio prey but virtue; it has no interval from the restless- 
ness of its malice, save when, bloated with its victims, it 
grovels to disgorge them at the withered shrine, where 
envy idolizes her own infirmities. Under surh a visita- 
tion how dreadful would be the destiny of the virtuous and 
the good if the providence of our constitution hud not 
given you the power, as, I trust, you will have the prin- 
ciple, to bruise the head of the serpent, and crush and 
crumble the altar of its idolatry ! 

And now, Gentlemen, having toiled through this nar- 
rative of unprovoked and pitiless persecution, I should 
with pleasure consign my client to your hands, if a more 
imperative duty did not still remain to me. and that is, to 
acquit him of every personal motive in the prosecution 
of this action. No ; in the midst of slander, and suffer- 
ing, and severities unexampled, he has had no thought, 
but, that as bis enemies evinced how malice could perse- 
cute, he should exemplify how religion could endure ; 
that if his piety failed to affect the oppressor, his patience 
might at least avail to fortify the afflicted. He was as 
the rock of Scripture before the face of infidelity. The 
rain of the deluge had fallen — it only smoothed his as- 
perities : the wind of the cempest beat — it only blanched 
his brow : the rod, not of prophecy, but of persecution, 
smote him : and the desert, glittering with the Gospel dew, 
became a miracle of the faith it would have tempted ! No, 
Gentlemen ; not selfishly has he appealed to this tribu- 
nal; but the venerable religion wounded in his character, 
—but the august priesthood vilified in his person, — but 



o'MTJLI.AN V. M'KORKIIX. 99 

the doubts of the sceptical, hardened by his acquiescence, 
—but the fidelity of the feeble, hazarded by his forbear- 
ance, goaded him from the profaned privacy of the clois- 
ter into this repulsive scene of public accusation. In him 
this reluctance springs from a most natural and charac- 
teristic delicacy : in us it would become a most overstrain- 
ed injustice. No, Gentlemen : though with him we must 
remember morals outraged, religion assailed, law viola- 
ted, the priesthood scandalized, the press betrayed, and 
all the disgusting calendar of abstract evil ; yet uith him 
we must not reject the injuries of the individual sufferer. 
We must picture to ourselves a young man, partly by the 
self denial of parental love, partly by the energies of per- 
sonal exertion, struggling into aprofesiion, where by the 
pious exercise of his talents, he may make the fame, the 
wealth, the flatteries of this world, so many angel heraldg 
to the happiness of the next. His precept is a treasure 
to the poor ; his practice, a model to the rich. When he 
reproves, sorrow seeks his presence as a sanctuary ; and 
in his path of peace, should he pause by the death bed of 
despairing sin, the soul became imparadised in the light 
of his benediction! Imagine, Gentlemen, you see him 
thus ,• and that, if you can, imagine vice so desperate as 
to defraud the world of so fair a vision. Anticipate for 
a moment the melancholy evidence we must too soon ad- 
duce to you. Behold him, by foul, deliberate, and infa* 
mous calumny, robbed of the profession he had so strug- 
gled to obtain, swindled from the flock he had so labour- 
ed to ameliate, torn from the school where infant virtue 
vainly mourns an artificial orphanage, hunted from the 
home of his youth, from the friends of his heart, a hope- 
less, fortuneless, companionless exile, hanging, in some 
stranger sceiae, on the precarious pity of the few, whose 
charity might induce their compassion to bestow, what 
this remorseless slanderer would compel their justice to 
withhold ! I will not pursue this picture ; I will not detain 
you from the pleasure of your possible compassion; for 
oh! divine isthe pleasure you are destined to experience ; 
— dearer to ynnr hearts shall be the sensation, than to 
your pride shall be the dignity it will give you. What [ 
though the people will hail the saviours of their pastor: 
what ! though the priesthood will hallow the guardians 
of their brother ; though many a peasant heart will leap 
at your name, and majiy an infant eye will embalm thek 



100 SPEECH IN THE CASE OIF 

fame who restored to life, to station, to dignity, to cha- 
racter, the venerable friend who taught their trembling 
tongues to lisp the rudiments of virtue and religion, still 
dearer than all will be the consciousness of the deed. 
Nor, believe me, countrymen, will it rest here. Oh no ! 
if there be light in instinct, or truth in Revelation, believe 
me, at that awful hour, when you shall await the last in- 
evitable verdict, the eye of your hope will not be the less 
bright, nor the agony of your ordeal the more acute, 
because you shall have, by this day's deed, redeemed the 
Almighty's persecuted Apostle, from the grasp of an in- 
satiate malice — from the fang of a worse than Philistine 
persecution. 



• 






gJPMKDH 



OP 



MR. PHILLIPS, 

IN 

€fie €a$e of ConnaaSton fc« ©iHon. 

DELIVERED IN 

THE COUNTY COURT-HOUSE OF ROSCOMMON, 

My Lord and Gentlemen, 

In this case I am one of (lie counsel for the Plaintiff* 
who has directed me to explain to you the wrongs fop 
which, at your hands, he solicits reparation. It ap- 
pears to me a case which undoubtedly merits much con- 
sideration, as well from the novelty of its appearance 
amongst us, as for the circumstances by which it is at- 
tended. Nor am I ashamed to say, that in my mind* 
not the least interesting of those circumstances is the 
poverty of the man who has made this appeal to me. 
Few are the consolations which soothe— hard must be 
the heart which does not feel for him. He is, Gentle- 
men, a man of low birth and humble station; with lit- 
tle wealth but from the labor of his hands, with no rank 
but the integrity of his character, with no recreation 
Iwit in the circle of his home, and with no ambition, but, 



10% SPEECH IX T3E CASE 0¥ 

when his days are full, to leave that little circle the in- 
heritance of an honest name, and the treasure of a good 
man's memory. Far inferior, indeed, is he in this re, 
spect to his more fortunate antagonist. He, on the con- 
trary, is amply either hlessed or cursed with those qua- 
lifications which enable a man to adorn or disgrace the 
society in Which he lives, fie is, I understand, the re- 
presentative of an honorable name, the relative of a dis- 
tinguished family, the supposed heir to their virtues, the 
indisputable inheritor of their riches. He has heen for 
m iny years a resident of your county, and has had the 
advantage of collecting round him all those recollections, 
which, springing from the scenes of school- boy associa- 
tion, or from the more matured enjoyments of the man, 
crowd as it were unconsciously to the heart, and cling 
with a venial partiality to the comnauion and the friend. 
So impressed, in truth, has he been with these advan- 
tages, that, surpassing the usual expenses of a trial, he 
lias selected a tribunal where he vainly times such con- 
siderations will have weight, and where he well knows 
my client's humble rank can have no claim but that to 
which his miseries may entitle him. 1 am sure, how- 
ever, he has wretchedly miscalculated, I know none of 
you, personally; but I have no doubt I am addressing 
men who will not prostrate their consciences before pri- 
vilege or power ; who will remember that there is a no- 
bility above birth, and a wealth beyond riches; who 
will feel that, as in the eye of that God to whose aid 
ihey have appealed, there is not the minutest difference 
between the rag and the robe, so in the contemplation of 
that law which constitutes our boast, guilt can have no 
protection, or innocence no tyrant; men wh» will have 
pride in proving that the noblest adage of our noble con- 
stitution is not an illusive shadow ; and that the pea- 
sant's cottage, roofed with straw and tenanted by po- 
verty, stands as inviolate from all invasion as the man- 
sion of the monarch. 

My client's name, Gentlemen, is Connaghton. and 
when I have given you his name you have almost all his 
history. To cultivate the path of honest industry com- 
prises, in one lint, "the short and simple annals of the 
poor." This has been his humble, but at the same time 
most honorable occupation. It matters little with what 
artificial nothings chance may distinguish the name, or 



C02TWAGHT0N V. DILLeN. 103 

decorate the person ; the child of lowly life, with virtue 
for its handmaid, holds as proud a title as tlie highest— 
as rich an inheritance as the wealthiest. \ v cll lias eke 
poet of your country said — that 

" Princes or Lords may flourish or may fade, 
A breath can make them, as a breath has made ; 
But a brave peasantry, their country's pride, 
When once destroy'd can never be supplied." 

Fur all the virtues which adorn that'peasantry, which 
can render humble life respected, or give the highest sta- 
tions their most permanent distinctions, my client stands 
conspicuous. A hundred years of sad vicissitude, and, 
in this land, ofien of strong temptation, have rolled away 
since the little farm on which he lives received his family: 
and during all that time not one accusation has disgra- 
ced, not one crime has sullied it. The same spot has 
seen his grandsirc and his parent pass away from this 
world ; the village-memory records their worth, and the 
rustic tear hallows their resting-place. After all, when 
life's mockeries shall vanish from before us, and the heart 
that now beats in the proudest bosom here, shall moulder 
unconcious beneath its kindred clay, art cannot erect a 
nobler monument, or genius compose a purer panegyric* 
Such, gentlemen, was almost the only inheritance with 
which my client entered the World, fie did net disgrace 
it; his vouth, his manhood, '»is age up to this moment, 
have passed without a blemish ; and he now stands con- 
fessedly the head of the little village in which he lives. 
About five-and-twenty years ago he mairied the sister 
of a highly respectable R«man Catholic clergyman, by 
whom he had a family of seven children, whom thry edu- 
cated in the principles of morality and religion, and who, 
until the defendant's interference* were the pride of their 
humble home, and th«- charm or the consolation of its 
vicissitudes. In their virtuous children the rejoicing pa- 
rents felt their youth renewed, tjieir age made happy; 
the days of labour became holidays in their smile,* and 
if the hand of affliction pressed onthrm, they looked up- 
on their little ones, and their mourning ended. I can- 
not paint the glorious host of feelings • the joy, the love, 
the hope, the pride, the blended paradise of rich emotions 
with which the God of nature fills the father's heart when 
he beholds his child in all its imal loveliness, when the 



104 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

vision of his infancy rises as it were reanimate before 
him, and a divine vanity exaggerates every trifle into 
some mysterious omen, which shall smooth his aged 
wrinkles, and make his grave a monument of honour ! / 
cannot describe them ; but, if there be a parent on the 
jury, he will comprehend me. It is stated to me, that of 
all his children there were none more likely to excite such 
feelings in the plaintiff than the unfortunate subject of 
the present action : she was his favorite daughter, and 
she did not shame his preference. You shall find most 
satisfactory, that she was without stain or imputation : 
an aid and a blessing to her parents, and an example to 
her younger sisters, who looked up to her for instruction. 
She to(,k a pleasure in assisting in the industry of their 
home; and it was at a neighbouring market, where she 
went to dispose of the little produce of that industry, that 
she unhappily attracted the notice of the defendant. In- 
deed, such a situation was not without its interest, — a 
young female, in the bloom of her attractions, exerting 
her faculties in a parent's service, is an object lonely in 
the eye of God, and, one would suppose, estimable in the 
eye of mankind. Far different, however, were the sen- 
sations w Inch she excited in the defendant. He saw her 
arrayed, as he confesses, in charms that enchanted him ; 
er youth, her beauty, the smile of her innocence, and 
iety of her toil, but inflamed a brutal and licentious 
that should have blushed itself away in such a pre- 
•. V: hat cared he for the con&equences of his gra- 
tification ? — There was 



* fc No honour, no relenting truth, 



To paint the parents fondling o'er their child, 

Then show the ruin'd maid, and her distraction wildT' 

ought he of the home he was to desolate ? What 
thought he of the happiness he was to plunder ? His sen- 
sual rapine paused not to contemplate the speaking pic- 
ture of the cottage-ruin, the blighted hope, the broken 
heart, the parent's agony, and. last and mubt withering 
in tfie woful group, the wretched victim herself starving 
he sin of a promiscuous prostitution, and at length 
perhaps:, with her own hand, anticipating the more tedi- 
ous murder of its diseases ! He need not, if 1 am instruct- 
ed rightly, have tortured his fancy for the miserable 



CONNAGHTON V. DllXOtf. 105 

consequences of hope bereft, and expectation plundered. 
Through no very distant vista, he might have seen the 
form of deserted loveliness weeping over the worthless- 
ness of his worldly expiation, and warning him, that as 
there were cruelties no repentance could atone, so there 
were sufferings neither wealth, nor time, nor absence 
could alleviate.* If his memory should fail him, if he 
should deny the picture, no man can tell him half so effi- 
ciently as the venerable advocate he has so judiciously 
selected, that a case might arise, where, though the 
energy of native virtue should defy the spoliation of the 
person, still crushed affection might leave an infliction 
on the mind, perhaps less deadly, but certainly not less 
indelible. 1 turn from this subject with an indignation 
which tortures me into brevity ; I turn to the agents by 
which this contamination was effected. 

I almost blush to name them, yet they were worthy of 
their vocation. They were no other than a menial ser- 
vant of Mr. Dillon ; and a base, abandoned, profligate 
ruffian, a brother-in-law of the devoted victim herself* 
whose bestial appetites he bribed into subserviency ! It 
does seem as if by such a selection he was determined to 
degrade the dignity of the master, while he violated the 
liner impulses of the man, by not merely associating 
with his own servant, but by diverting the purest streams 
of social affinity into the vitiated sewer of his enjoyment. 
Seduced by such instruments into a low public- house 
at Athlone, this unhappy girl heard without suspicion, 
their mercenary panegyric of the defendant, when, to 
her amazement, but no doubt, according to their previ- 
ous arrangement, he entered and joined their company. 
I do confess to you, Gentlemen, when 1 first perused 
this passage in my brief, I flung it from me with a con- 
temptuous incredulity. What ! i exclaimed, as no doubt 
you are all ready to exclaim, can this be possible ? Is 
it thus I am to And the educated youth of Ireiand occu- 
pied ? Is this the employment of the miserable aristo- 
cracy that yet lingers in this devoted country ? Am I 
to find them, not in the pursuit of useful science, not in 

*Mr. Phillips here alluded to a verdict of 5000^obtained at 
the late Gal way Assizes against the defendant, at The suit ot 
Miss Wilson, a very beautiful and interesting young lauy, ior a 
breach of promise of marriage. Mr. Wnitestone, who now plead- 
ed for Mr. Dillon, was Miss Wilson's advocate against him on 
the occasion alluded to^ 



lOo SPEECH IN THE CASE 01 

the encouragement of arts or agriculture, not in the re- 
lief of an impoverished tenantry, not in the proud march 
of an unsuccessful but not less sacred patriotism, not 
in the bright page of warlike immortality, dashing its 
iron crown from guilty greatness, or feeding freedom's 
laurel with the blood of t&e despot ! — but am I to find 
- them, amid drunken panders and corrupted slaves, de- 
ham hiog the innocence of village-life, and even amid 
the stews of the tavern, collecting or creating the mate- 
rials of the brothel ! Gentlemen, 1 am still unwilling to 
believe it, and, with all the sincerity of Mr. Dillon's ad- 
vocate, 1 do entreat you to reject it altogether, if it be 
not substantiated by the unimpeachable corroboration of 
an oath; As I am instructed, he did not, at this time, 
alarm his victim by any direct communication of his 
purpose; he saw that ** she wa* good as siie was fair," 
and that a premature disclosure would but alarm her 
virtue into an impossibility of violation. His- satellites, 
however, acted to admiration. They produced some 
trifle which he had left for her disposal ; they declared 
he had 1 mg felt for her a sincere attachment ; as a proof 
that it was pure, they urged the modesty with which, at 
a first interview, elevated above her as he was, he avoid- 
ed its disclosure. When sh«' pressed the madness of the 
expectation which could alone induce her to Consent to 
his addresses, they assured her that though in the Gist 
instance such an event was impossible, si ill in time it 
was far from being improbable ; that iniiiiy men from 
such motives forgot altogether the difference of station, 
that Mr. Dillon's own family had already proved e\ery 
obstavle might yield to an all-powerful passion, anU in- 
duce him to make her his wife, who had imposed an af- 
fecuonate credulity on his honour ! Such were the sub- 
tie artifices to which he sto ped. Do not imagine, how- 
ever, that she yielded immediately and implicit!) to their 
persua-iousj i should scarcely wonder if she did. Eve- 
ry da; shews us the rich, the powerful, and the educa- 
ted, bowing before the spell of ambition, or avarice, or 
pa si .in, to the sacrifice of their honour, their country, 
at; i their ^ouls ; what wonder, then, if a p<;or, ignorant, 
p* j >ant g ri had at once sunk before the united potency 
of such tnptatiohs ! But she did not. Many and ma- 
ny a tim i he truths which had been inculcated by her 
adoring parents roae up in arms ; and it was not until 



COXNAGHTON V. BILLOW. 107 

various interviews, and repeated artifices, and untiring 
eflf ir is, that she yielded her faith, her fame, and her 
fortunes, to the disposal of her seducer. Alas, alas ! 
ho v little did she suppose that a mo inert t was to come 
when, every hope denounced, and every expectation 
dashed, he was to fling her for a very subsistence on 
the charity or the crimes of the wot Id she had renounced 
for him ! How little did she reflect that in her humble 
station, unsoiled and sinless, she might look down upon 
the elevation to which vice would raise her ! Yes, even 
were it a throne, 1 say she might look down on it. — 
There is not on this earth a lovelier vision ; there is not 
for the skies a more angelic ■ andioate than a young, mo- 
dest maiden robed in chastity ; no matter what its habi- 
tation, whether it be the palace or the hut :— 

" So dear to Heaven is saintly Chastity, 
That when a ?oul is found sincerei} so, 
A thousand liveried angels lackey her, 
Driving tar off each thing of sin and guilt, 
And in clear dream and solemn vision 
Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear, 
Till oft converse with heavenly habitants 
Begins to cast a beam on the outward shape, 
The unpolluted temple of the mind, 
And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence, 
'Till all be made immortal !" 

Such is the supreme power of chastity, as described 
by one of our divinest bards, and the pleasure which I 
feel in the recitation of such a passage is not a little en- 
hanced, by the pride that few coun lies more fully afford 
its exemplification than our own. Let foreign envy de- 
cry us as it will, Chastity is the instinct of the Irish Fe- 
malt ; the pride of her talents, the power of her beau- 
ty, the splendour of her accomplishments, are but so 
many handmaids of this vestal virtue; it adorns her in 
the court, it ennobles her in the cottage ; wh» ther she 
basks in prosp< rity or pines in sorrow, it clings about 
her like the diamond of the rooming on the mountain 
floweret, trembling even in the ray that once exhibits 
and inhales it \ Rare in our land is the absence of this 
virtue. Thanks to the modesty that venerates; tha/ks 
to the manliness that brands and avenges its violation.— 
You have seen that it was by no common temptations 
even this humble villager yielded to seduction. 



108 SPEECH IX THE CASE OF 

I now come, Gentlemen, to another fact in the progress 
of thistrms action, betraying, in my mind, as base a pre- 
meditation, and as low and as deliberate a deception as 
I ever heard vS. While this wretched creature was in a 
kind of counterpoise between her fear and her affection, 
struggling as well as she could between passion inflamed 
and virtue unextinguished. Mr. Dillon, ardently avow- 
ingthat such an event as separation was imposible, ar- 
dently avowing ah eternal attachment, insisted upon per- 
fecting an article which should plate her above the reach 
of contingencies. Gentlemen, you sh all see this docu- 
ment voluntarily executed by an educated and (stated 
gentleman of your county. J know not how you will 
feel, but for my part T protest I am in a suspence of ad- 
miration between the virtue of the proposal and the mag- 
nificent prodigality of the provision. Listen to the ar- 
ticle: it' is all in his own hand writing:— --"I promise,*' 
says he, «*to give Mary Connaghton the sum often pounds 
sterling per annum, when I part with her; but if she, 
the said Mary should at any time hereafter conduct her- 
self improperly, or (mark this. Gentlemen,) has done so 
before the drawing of this article, I am not bound to pay 
the sum often pounds, and this article becomes null and 
void as if the same was never executed. John Dillon.'* 
There, Gentlemen, there is the notable and dignified 
document for you ! take it into your Jury box, for 1 know 
not how to comment on it. Oh, yes I have heard of am- 
bition urging men to crime— I have heard of love inflam- 
ing even to madness— I have read of passion rushing over 
law and religion to enjoyment ; but never, until this, (lid 
I see a frozen a\arice chilling the hot pulse of sensuality 
and desire, pause before its brutish draught, that itmight 
add deceit to dessolation ! I need not tell you that hav- 
ing provided in the very execution of this article for its 
predetermined infringement ; that knowing, as he must 
any stipulation for the pun base of vice to be invalid by 
our law ; that haying in the body of this article insert- 
ed a provision against that previous pollution which his 
prudentcaprice might invent hereafter, but which his own 
conscience, her universal character, and even his own 
desire for her possession, all assured him did not exist 
at the time, f need not tell you that he now urges the in- 
validity of that instrument; that he now presses that 
previous pollution ; that he refuses from his splendid in- 



CON3TAGRT0N V. DIIXOV. 109 

come the pittance of the pounds to the wretch lie has 
ruined, and spurns her from him to pine beneath the re- 
proaches of a parent's mercy, or linger out a living death 
in the charnel-houses of prostitution ! You see, gentle- 
men, to what designs like these may lead a man. I 
have no doubt, if Mr. Dillon had given his heart fair 
play, had let his own nature gain a moment's ascendan- 
cy, he would not have acted so ; but there is something 
in a seducer of peculiar turpitude. I know of no cha- 
racter so vile, so detestable. He is the vilest of robbers. 
for he plunders happiness ; the worst of murderers, for 
lie murders innocence ; his f.ppetites are-of the brute, 
his arts of the demon ; the heart of the child and the 
course of the parent are the foundations of the altar 
which he rears to a lust, whose fires are the fires of hell, 
and whose incense is the agony of virtue! I hope Mr. 
Dillon's advocate may prove that he does not deserve to 
rank in such a ciass as this ; but if he does, I hope the 
infatuation, inseparably connected with such proceedings, 
may tempt him to deceive you through the same plea by 
which he has defrauded his miserable dupe. 

I dare him to attempt the defamation of a character, 
which, before his cruelties, never was even beforr sus- 
pected. Happily, Gentlemen, happily for herself, this 
wretched creature, thus cast upon the world, appealed 
to the parental refuge she had forfeited. I need not de- 
scribe to you the parent's anguish at the heart-rending 
discovery. God help the poor man when misfortune 
comes upon him ! How few are his resources ! How 
distant his consolation ! You must not forget, Gentle- 
men, that it is not the unfortunate victim herself who ap- 
peals to you for compensation. Her crimes, poor wretch, 
have outlawed her from retribution, and, however the 
temptations by which her erring nature was seduced, 
may procure an audience from the ear of mercy, the 
stern morality of earthly law refuses their interference. 
No ; no; it is the wretched parent who comp? this day 
before you— his aged locks withered by misfortune, and 
his heart broken by crimes of which he was unconscious. 
He resorts to this tribunal, in the language of the law, 
claiming the value of his daughter's servitude ; but let 
it not be thought that it is for her mere manual labours 
he solicits compensation. No, you are to compensate 
him for all he has suffered, for all he has to suffer, for 



110 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

feelings outraged, for gratifications plundered, for ho- 
nest pride put to tin* blush, for the exiled endearment* 
of his once happy home, for all those innumerable and 
instinctive extacies with whHi a virtuous daughter tills 
her father's heart, for which language is too poor to 
have a name, hut of which nature is abundantly and 
richly eloquent ! Do not suppose I am endeavoring to 
influence you by the power of declamation. I am lay. 
ing down to you the British law, as liberally expounded 
and solemnly adjudged. I speak the language of the 
English Lord Eldon. a judge of great experience and 
greater learning — (Mr. Phillips here r.ited several cases 
as decided by Lord Kldon.) — Such, Gentlemen, is the 
language of Lord Kldon. I speak also on the authority 
of our own Lord Avonmore, a judge who illuminated 
the bench by his genius, endeared it by his suavity, and 
dignified it by his bold uncompromising probity ; one of 
those rare men, who hid the thorns of law beneath the 
brightest flowers of literature, and, its it were, with the 
wand of an enchanter, changed a wilderness into a gar- 
den ! I speak upon that high authority — but 1 sp< ak on 
other authority paramount to all ! — on the authority of 
nature rising up within the heart of man, and calling for 
vengeance upon such an outrage. God forbid, that in a 
case of this kind we were to grope our way through the 
ruins of antiquity, and blunder over statutes, and bur- 
row through black letter in search of an interpretation 
which Providence has engraved in living letters on every 
human heart. Yes ; if there be one amongst you bless- 
ed with a daughter, the smile of whose infancy still 
cheers your memory, and the promise of whose youth 
illuminates your hope, who has endeared the toils of your 
manhood, whom you look up to as the solace of your 
declining years, whose embrace alleviated the pang of 
separation, whose growing welcome hailed your oft an- 
ticipated return — oh, if there be one amongst you, to 
whom those recollections are dear, to whom those hopes 
are precious— let him only fancy that daughter torn from 
his caresses by a seducer's arts, and cast upon the world, 
robbed of her innocence, — and then let him ask his heart, 
« what money could reprise him /^ 

The defendant, Gentleman, cannot complain that I put 
it thus to you. If, in place of seducing, he had assault- 
ed t! irl -if he had attempted by force what h* 



CONNAGHTOJC V. DILLON. l!l 

has achieved by fraud, his life would have been the for- 
feit ; and yet how trifling in comparison would have 
been the parent's agony ! He has no right, then, to 
complain, if you should estimate this outrage at the 
price of his very existence ! I am told, indeed, this 
gentleman entertains an opinion, prevalent enough in 
the age of a feudalism, as arrogant as it was barbarous,, 
that the poor are only a species of property, to be treat- 
ed according to interest or caprice ; and that wealth is 
at once a patent for a crime, and an exemption from its 
consequences, i appily for this land, the day of such 
opinions has passed over it — tire eye of a purer feeling 
and more profound philosophy now beholds riches but as 
one of the aids to virtue, and sees in oppressed poverty 
only an additional stimulus to increased protection. A. 
generous' heart rannot help feeling, that in cases of this 
kind the poverty of the injured is a dreadful aggra- 
vation. If the rich suffer, they have much to console 
them ; but when a poor man loses the darling of his 
heart — the sole pleasure with which nature blessed him 
—how ahject, how cureless is the despair of his destitu- 
tion ! Believe me, Gentlemen, you have not only a so- 
lemn duty to perform, but you have an awful responsi- 
bility imposed upon you. You are this day, in some de- 
gree, trustees for the morality of the people-- perhaps 
of the whule nation ; for, <!epend upon it, if the sluices 
of immorality are once opened among the lower orders, 
th«' frightful tide, drifting upon its surface all that is 
dignified or dear, will soon rise even to the habitations 
of the highest. I feel, Gentlemm, I have discharged 
my duty — I am sure you will do your's. I repose my 
client with i onilderice in your hands ; and most fervently 
do 1 hope, that when evening shall find you at your hap- 
py firesides, surrounded by the sacred circle of your 
children^ you may not feel the heavy curse gnawing at 
your heart, of having let loose, unpunished, the prowler 
that may devour them. 



OP 



MR. PHILLIPS, 



IS 



€|je Cage of Creifl&ton b. €ottmgenfr 



DELIVERED IN 



THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS, DUBLIN. 



My Lord and Gentlemen, 

I am with my learned brethren counsel for the plain- 
tiff. My friend Mr. Cur-ran has told you the nature of 
the action. It has fallen to my lot to state more al large 
to you the aggression by which it has hi en occasioned. 
BHie*e me it is with no paltry affectation of under va- 
luing my very humble powers « hat I wish he had select- 
ed some more experienced, or at least less credulous ad- 
vo< ate. I feel 1 cannot do m\ duty: 1 am not fit to ad- 
dress yon. I have incapacitated myself; I know not 
whether any of the calumnies which have so industrious- 
ly anticipated this trial, have leached \our ears; but I 
do confess the} did so wound and poison mint, that to 
satisfy my doubts 1 visited the house of miser) at d 
mourning, ami the scene which set s< eptism a* test, has 
set des< ription at defiance. Had 1 not yielded to those 



114 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

interested misrepresentations, I might from my brief 
have sketched the fact, and from my fancy drawn the 
consequences; bnt as it is, reality rushes before my 
Frightened memory, and Alienees the tongue and m>»'ks 
the imagination. Believe me, Gentlemen, you are mi- 
pan-'lled there upon no ordinary occasion ; nominally, 
indeed, foil are to repair a private wrong, and it is a 
wrong as deadly as human wickedness ran inflict — as 
human weakness fan endure; a wrong w ich annihi- 
lates the hope of the parent and the happiness of the 
child; which in one moment blights the fondest antici- 
pations of the heart, and darkens the social hearth, 
and worse than depopulates the habitations of the hap- 
py ! But, Gentlemen, high as it is, this is far from 
your exclusive duty. You are to do much more. You 
are to say whether an example of such transcendant 
turpitude is to stalk forth f«»r public imitation — whether 
national morals are to have the law for their protection, 
or imported crime is to feed upon impunity— whether 
chastity and religion are still to he permitted to linger 
in this province, or it is to become one loathsome den 
of legalized prostitution — whether the sacred volume of 
the Gospel, and the venerable statutes of the law are 
still to be respected, or converted into a pedestal on 
which the mob and the military are to erect the idol of a 
drunken adoration. Gentlemen, these are the questions 
you are to try ; hear the facts on which your decision 
must be founded. 

It is now about five-and twenty years since the plain- 
tiff, Mr. Crcighton, commenced business as a slate mer- 
chant in the city of Dublin. His vocation was humble, 
it is true, but it was nevertheless honest; and though, 
unlike his opponent, (he heights of ambition lay not be- 
fore him, the path of respectability did — he approved 
himself a good man and a respectable citizen. Arrived 
at the age of manhood, he sought not the gratification of 
its natural desires by adultery or seduction. For him 
the home of honesty was sacred ; for him the poor man's 
child was unassailed ; no domestic desolation mourned 
his enjoyment ; no anniversary of wo commemorated 
his achievements ; from his own sphere of life naturally 
and honorably he selected a companion, whose beauty 
blessed his bed, and whose virtues consecrated bis 
swelling. Eleven lovely children blessed their union, 



CREIGHTOSr Y. TOWNSEND. 115 

the darlings of their heart, the. delight of their evenings, 
and, as they blindly anticipated, the prop and solace of 
their approaching age. Oh! sacked wedded l«»ve ! 
how dear! how delightful! how divine are thy enjoy- 
ments ! Contentment crowns thy board, affection gl .ds 
thy fireside ; passion, chaste but ardent, modest but in- 
tense, sighs o'er thy couch, the atmosphere of paradise! 
Surely, surely, if this consecrated right can acquire 
from circumstances a factitious interest* 'tis when we 
see it cheering the poor man's home, or shedding over 
the dwelling of misfortune the light of its warm and 
lovely consolation. Unhappily, g ntlemen, it has that 
interest here. That capricious power wlMch often dig- 
nifies the worthless hypocrite, as oft-n wounds the in- 
dustrious and the honest. The late ruinous contest, 
having in its career confounded all the proportions of so- 
ciety, and with its last gasp sighed famine and niisinr* 
tune, on the world, has cast mv industri us client, with 
too many of his companions, from competence to penury. 
Alas, alas, to him it left worse of its satellites behind it ; 
it left the invader even of his misery — tin* seducer of his 
sacred and jinspotted innocence. Mysterious Provi- 
dence! was it noten-'Ug-h that sorrow r< bed the hapyy 
home in mourning was it not enough that disappoint- 
ment preyed upon its loveliest prospects — was it no* 
enough that its little inmates cried in vain for bread, 
and heard no answvr but the poor father's sigh, and 
drank no sustenance but the wretched mother's tears? 
Was this a time for passion, lawless, conscienceless, li- 
centious passion, with its eye of lust, its heart of stone, 
its hand of rapine, to rush into the mournful sanctuary 
of misfortune, casting crime into the cup of wo, and rob 
the parents of their last wealth, their child, and rob the 
child of her only charm, her innocence !! That this has 
been done I am instructed we shall prove : what requi- 
tal it deserves, gentlemen, you must prove to mankind. 
The defendant's name 1 understand is Townsend. He 
is of an age when every generous blossom of the spring 
should breathe an infant freshness round his heart ; of a 
family which should inspire not only high but hereditary 
principles of honour ; of a profession whose very essence 
is a stainless chivalry, and whose bought and bounden 
duty is the protection of the citizen. Such are the advan- 
ces with which ke appears before you— fearful advan- 



H6 SPEECH IN THE CASE 0* 

tages, because they repel all possible suspicion ; but you 
will agree with me, most damning adversaries, if it shall 
appear that the generous ardour of his youth was chilled 
- — that the noble inspiration of his birth was spurned— 
that the I «ifty impulse of his profession was despised — 
and that all that could grace, or animate, or ennoble, 
was used to his own discredit and his fellow-creature's 
misery. 

It was upon the first of June last, that on the banks of 
the canal, near Fortobello. Lieutenant Townsend first 
met the daughter of Mr. Creighton, a pretty interesting 
girl, scarcely sixteen years of age. She w as accompa- 
nied by her little sister, only four years old, with whom 
she was permitted to take a daily walk in that retired 
sp t, the vicinity of her residence. The defendant was 
attracted by her appearance — he left his party, and at- 
tempted to converse with her; she repelled his advan- 
ces — he immediately seized her infant sister by the hand 
whom he held as a ki d of ho&tage for an introduction to k 
his \ictim. A prepossessing appearance, a modest) of 
deportment apparently quite incompatible with any evil 
de ign, gradually silenced her alarm, and she answered 
the ommon place questions with which, on her waj home, 
h aiders ;ed her. Gentlemen, J admit it was an inno- 
cent imprudence; the rigid rules of matured morality 
should have repelled such communication ; yet, perhaps, 
:ig c'v i) by that 'strict standard, yon will rather 
1 mn the familiarity of the intrusion in a designing 
adult ha i he facility of access in a creature itfher age 
and her innocence. They thus separated, as she natu- 
rally supposed, to meet no more. Not such, however, 
was the determination of her destroyer. From that hour 
until lier ruin, he scarcely vr Instsfc lit of her — he II- 
I h r as a sh flow— he wav-laid her in her walks — 

he interrupted her in hev avocatmns — he haun'ed the 
et of her residence ; if she rehired to meet him* lie 
paraded b« fie her window at the hazard of xposing her 
fir : comparatiy h innocent imprudence to her urn on- 
flow happy would it have been had she 
! the timidity so natural to her age. and ap- 
\ at once t i their pard- n and their protection ! Geu- 
tle*u« n, 'his daih persecution continued I* r three months 
thiM e succcsive mo ths, hy ever) ait, *y every 
i, by every appeal to her vanity and her pas- 



CRETGHT'^N V. ToWtfSEND, ll '[ 

sion. did he toil forth? destruction of this unfortunate 
young creature. ! leave you to guess how many during 
ilia interval might have yielded to the bland ishments of 
maniier, the fas- inations of youth, the rarely resisted 
temptations of opportunity. For three long mouths she 
did resist them. Sh would have resisted them tor ever, 
but tor an expedient whi- h is without a model—but for 
an exploit which I trust in God will he without an imita- 
tion. Ilh. yes, he might ha<e returned to his country, 
and did he hut reflect,' he would rather have rejoiced at 
the virtuous triumph .if his victim, than mourned his own 
sonl redeeming defeat : he might have returned to his 
country, and told the (old blooded hollers of this land 
that their speculations (.poo Irish chastity were prejudi- 
ced aid proofless; that in the wreck qf all else we had 
retained our honour ; that though the national luminary 
had descended for a season, the streaks ot its loveliness 
still lingered on our horizon : that t he nurse of that genius 
which abroad had redeemed the name, and dignified the 
nature of man, was to be found at home in the spirit with- 
out a stain, and the purit) without a suspicion. He might 
have t Ai them truly that this did not result, as they v*. ould 
intimate, trom the absem e of passion or the want of civi- 
lization ; that it was the combined consequence of edu- 
cation, of example, and of impulse! and that, though in 
ali the revelry of enjoyment, the fair floweret of the Irish 
soil exhaled its fragrance and expanded its charms in the 
chaste and blessed beams of a virtuous affection, stiiS it 
shrunk with an instinctive sensitiveness from the gioss 
pollution oi an uuconsecrated contact ! 

Gentlemen, the common artilices of the seducer fail- 
ed ; the >yi\>n tones with which sensuality. awakens ap- 
petite and lulls purity had wasted themselves in air, and 
the intended victim, deaf to their fascination, moved 
along sate and untransfontied. He soon saw,that young 
as she was tiie vulgar expedients of vice were ineffectual; 
that the attractions of a glittering exterior failed,- and 
•that before she could he ti mpteii to her sensual damna- 
tion, his tongue must learn, it not the words of wisdom, 
at least the speciousmss of affected purity, lie pretend- 
i&\ a\\ affection as virtuous as it was violent; he called 
G -.d to witness the sincerity of his declaration; by ali 
the vovv-i which should tor ever rivet tin: honorable, and 
could not fail to convince even the incredulous, he pro- 



U& SPEECH IW THE CASE OF 

raised her marriage; over and over again he invoked 
the eternal denunciation if he was perfidious. To her 
acknowledged want of fortune, his constant reply was, 
that he had an independence; that all he wanted was 
beauty and virtue; that he saw she had the one. that had 
proved she had the other. W hen she pleaded the ob\ ious 
disparity of her birth, he answered, that lie was himself the 
only son of an English farmer ; that happiness was not the 
monopoly of rank or riches; that his parents would receive 
her as the child of their adoption, that he would cherish 
her as the charm of his existence. Specious as it uas, 
even this did not succeed; she determined to await its 
avowal to those who had given her life, and who hoped to 
have made it immaculate by the education they had be- 
stowed and the example they had offered. Some days 
after this he met her in her walks, for she could not pass 
her parents threshold without being intercepted. He 
asked where she was going-— she said, a friend knowing 
her fondness for books had promised her the loan of some, 
and she was going to receive them. He told her he had 
abundance, that they were just at his home, that he hop- 
ed after what had passed she would feel no i propriety 
iii receiving them. She was persuaded to accompany 
him. An ived, however, at the door of his lodgings, she 
positively refused to go any further; all his former arti- 
fices we. e redoubled ; he called God to witness he con- 
sidered her as his wife, and her character as dear to him 
as that of one of his sisters ; he affei ted mortification at 
any suspicion of his puritv ; he told her if she refused her 
confidence to his honorable affection, the little infant 
who accompany ed her was an inviolable guarantee for 
her protection. 

Gentlemen, this wretched child did suffer her creduli- 
ty to repose on his professions. Her theory taught her 
to respect the honor of a soldier ; her love repelled the 
imputation that debased its object ; and her youthful in- 
nocence rendered her as incredulous as she was uncon- 
scious of criminality. At first his behaviour correspond- 
ed with his professions ; he welcomed her to the home 
of which he hoped she would soon become the insepara- 
ble companion ; he painted the future joys of their do- 
mestic felicity, and dwelt with peculiar complacency on 
tome heraldic ornament which hung over his chimney- 
piece, and which, he said, wag the armorial ensign e- 



6REI6HT0N T. ¥0WNSEN». * J ,9 

his family ! Oh ! my Lord, how well would it have 
been had he hut retraced the fountain of that document^ 
had he recalled to mind the virtues it rewarded, the pur* 
train of honors it associated, the lineot spotless ancestry 
it distinguished, the high ambition its bequest inspired; 
the moral imitation it imperatively commanded • But 
when guilt once kindles within the human heart, all that 
is noble in our nature becomes parched and arid ; the 
blush of modesty fades before its glare, the sighs of vir- 
tue fan its lurid flame, and every divine essence of our 
being but swells and exasperates its infernal confla- 
gration. 

Gentlemen, I will not disgust this audience; I will 
not debase myself by any description of the scene that 
followed : I will not detail the arts, the excitements, 
the promises, the pledges with which deliberate lust in- 
flamed the passions, and finally overpowered the strug- 
gles of innocence and of youth. It is too much to know 
that tears c >u!d not appease — that misery could not af- 
fect — that the presence and the prayers of an infant 
could not awe him ; and that the wretched victim, be- 
tween the ardour of passion and the repose of love, sunk 
at length, inflamed, exhausted, and confiding, beneatk 
the heartless grasp of an unsympathising sensuality. 

The appetite of the hour thus satiated, at a temporal, 
perhaps an eternal hazard, he dismisssed the sisters te 
their unconscious parents, not, however, without ex- 
torting a promise, that on the ensuing night Miss 
Creighton would desert her home for ever for the arms 
of a fond, affectionate, and faithful husband. Faithful, 
alas ! but only to his appetites, he did seduce her from 
that " sacred home," to deeper guilt, to more deliberate 
cruelty. 

After a suspense comparatively happy, her parent! 
became acquainted with her irrevocable ruin. The mi- 
serable mother, supported by the mere strength of des- 
peration, rushed half phrenzied to the castle, where 
Mr. Townsend was onduty. « Give me back my child !" 
was all she could articulate. The parental ruin struck 
the spoiler almost speechless. The dreadful words, •< I 
have your child," withered her heart up with the horrid 
joy that death denied its mercy, that her daughter lived, 
but lived, alas, to infamy. She could neither speak nor 
hear ; she sunk down convulsed and powerless. As soon 



]gf) SPEECH IN THE CARE OF 

as* she could recover to any thing »f eflf»rt, naturally did 
--he turn t » the residence of Mr Tnwnseod : his orders 
bad anticipated her— the sentinel refused her entrance. 
.She told her sad na* ration, she i nplored his pity : with 
the. eloquence of grief she a*ked him. «■ had tie home, op 
wife, orchndim." « Oh, Holy Nature! thou didst not 
plead in vain !" even the rude soldiers heart relented. 
He admitted her by stealth, and she once n -re held 
within her anus the. darling hope of many an anxious 
hour: duped, des latent-graded it was true— hut still 
—but still " her child/ 9 Gentlemen, if the parental 
heart cannot suppose »hat followed, how little adequate 
am I to - -nt it. Home this wretched creature could 
not return; a seducers mandate and a father's anger 
equally forbade it. But she gave whatever cons dation 
b he was capable; she told the fatal tale ol her undoing; 
the hones, the promises, the studii d specious arts that had 
seduced her: and with a desperate credulity still watch- 
ed the light that, glimmering i»» the distant vista of her 
love, mocked her with hope, and was to have her to the 
tempest To all the prophecies' of maternal anguish, 
she would still reply, -Oh. no- in the eve of Heaven 
he is my husband ; he took me fr< rn my home, my hap- 
piness, and vou, but still he pledged to me a soldier s 
honour— hut he assured me with a Christian's con- 
science; for three long months I heard his vowsol loxe; 
he is honourable i nd will not deceive ; he is human and 
cannot desert me." Bear, G ntl men. hear, I beseech 
vou, how this innocent confidence was returned. V hen 
her indignant father had resorted to Lord Forbes, the 
commander of the forces, and to the noble and learned 
head of this Court, both of whom received him with a 
sympathy that did them honour, Mr Towneend sen! a 
brother officer to inform her she must quit his residence 
and take lodgings. In vain -In* remonstrated, in *"in 
she reminded him of her former purity, ad of the p.o- 
mises that betrayed it. She was literally turned out at 
ni'ht fall to find whatever refuge the God of tin shelter- 
less miff HI provide for I r. Deserted and disowned, 
how naturally did she torn to the once happy home, 
whose inmates she had d.sgraced, and whose protection 
she had forfeited ! how naturallv did she Urn k the o. co 
familiar and once welcome avenues lookeil f. win: g as 
thepasstd! how naturally did she linger l.ke a repose- 



CREIGHTOX V. TOWNSEND. 121 

less spectre round the memorials of her living happi- 
ness ! ' Her heart failed her : where a parent's sniiie had 
ever cheered her, she could not face the glance of shame, 
or sorrow, or disdain. She returned to seek her se- 
ducer's pity even till the morning. Good God how can 
I disclose it ? the very guard had orders to refuse her 
access; even by the rabble soldiery she was cast into the 
street, amid the night's dark horrors, the victim of her 
own credulity, the outcast of another's crime, to seal 
her guilty woes with suicide, or lead a living death amid 
the tainted sepulchres of a promiscuous prostitution ! 
Far, far am I from sorry that it was so. Horrible be- 
yond thought as is this aggravation, I only hear in it the 
voice of the Deity in thunder upon the crime. Yes, 
yes ; it is the present God arming the vicious agent 
against the vice, and terrifying from its conception by 
the turpitude to which it may lead. But what aggrava- 
tion does seduction need 2 Vice is its essence, lust its 
end, hypocrisy its instrument, and innocence its victim. 
Must 1 detail its miseries? Who depopulates the home 
of virtue, making the child an orphan, and the parent 
Childless ? Who wrests its crutch from the tottering 
helplessness of piteous age ? Who rings its happiness 
from the heart of youth ? Who shocks the vision of the 
public eye ? Who infects your very thoroughfares with 
.. se, disgust, obscenity, and profaneness ? Who pol- 
lutes the harmless scenes where modesty resorts for 
mirth, and toil for recreation, with sights that stain the 
pure and shock the sensitive ? Are these the phrases of 
an interested advocacy ? is there one amongst you bu^ 
has witnessed their verification? Is there one amongst 
you so fortunate, or so secluded* as not to have wept 
over the wreck of health, and youth, and loveliness, and 
talent, the fatal trophies or the seducer's triumph — some 
form, perhaps, where itvevy grace was squandered, and 
every beauty paused to waste its bloom, and every beam 
of mind and tone of melody poured their profusion of the 
public wonder; all that a parent's prayer could ask, or 
a lover's adoration fancy \ in whom even pollution looked 
so lovely, that virtue would have made her more than 
human I Is there an epithet too vile for such a spoiler? 
Is there a punisL , severe for such depravity ? I 

know not upon what complaisance this English seducer 
calculate from a jury of this country ? 1 know not, 



3 22 SPEECH IX THE CA«E 01? 

indeed, whether he mav not think he does rour wives nwl 
daughters some honour by their contamination. B : i 
fc now at reception he would expert nee from 

ry of his own country. I at in such genera) «\- 

ftrration do ffiey view this rrime, they think n«i pos« 
plea a palliation ; no, not t thesedu 

net herprevi ;nc- from her parents ; 

not a levity approaching almost to absolute guilt : not 
an indiscrvtton in the mother, that In re even color of 
connivance ; and in this opinion they have been support- 
ed by ): the venerable authorities with whom age, in- 
tegrity, ami learning have adorned the t jud« ment seat. 

G ntlemen, i rome i 1 *. these authorities. In 

the rase nf Toll) Ige i > my Lord, it appear- 

ed the ;h'»s d reduced \vn«i thirty years of age, and 1-ng 
before absent from her home; ^ et, on a i otion to set 
Rskle the verdict For exressive damages, what was the 
language of Chief Justice \V»lmoi ? l « I regret," said 
b , " that they w re not greater ; though the plaintiff's 
loss (;'uJ not amount to twenty shillings, the jury were 
ring ample damages, became such actions 
Id he encoliraged f«r examples sake*." Justice Cine 
wished they had given twice the sum, and in this opi- 
hion ii>e whole bench roiirnrrrd. There was a case 
I was of mature age, and In ins: apart from 
i irents : here* thr \ icim is aim* st a » hild, and w.-.s 
iriev t for a moment s. paratrd from her home. Again, 
in the case of •• Rennet against Alcot," on a si- 
iLilar motion, greun< rd on the apparently overwhelming 
fan, tha of the girl ha;i actually sent the 

defendant into her daughter's bedchamber, when* the 
criminality occurred. Justice Bnller declared, "he 
tho igh the parent's indiscretion no excuse for the de- 
ant's culpability ;" and the verdict of 20of. damages 
was confirmed. There was a rase «>l literal runnivattce : 
, will tl»:y have ti-'.' hardihood to bint c en its sus- 
piciun ? You all must remember, Gentlemen, the case 
oi' our o*n c Captain Gore, against whom, 

o her day, an English j: a verdict of 

iges, though it was \ hat the person 

• » have b If the seducer, 

to thiow gravel up at the windows 
Lord Elleuborough refused to dis- 
turb the verdict. Thus you :;. J rest not on my 



GREIGHTON V. TOV^STSND. i~^> 

owr, proofless a •<! unsupported dictum. 1 rely upon 
:c(i i »r* and venerable authorities— not only on 
tile indignant den nrintion of the moment, but on the 
deliberate co rurrenre of the ei lightened and tin dispas- 
s'io'iate. ! see my i» rued opponent smile. I t< !! him 
I would not rare if tbe b «oks were an absolute blank 
upon the subject. 1 would then make the human heart 
my authority ? I w->uld aj>peal to the bosom of ei ery 
man who hears use, whether such a crime should grow 
u-i unislu .! into a pre< jpvtent : whether innocence should 
b made the subject of a brutal speculation ; whe- 
ther the sacred seal of filial obedience, upon which the 
Almighty Parent has affixed his eternal fiat, should be 
tfiij ited b) a blasphemous and selfish' libertinism. 

G vitlemen. if the cases I have quoted, palliated as 
the;, were, have been humanely marked by ample da- 
m.ges, what should >ou giv< here wherc{ther< is nothing 
to excuse— win re there is e\ery thing to aggravate ! 1 he 
seduction was deliberate, it was three months in pro- 
gress, its victim w s almost a < uild. it \\a* committed 
ii»Vderthe m<«st alluring promises, it was followed by a 
deed of the most dreadful cruelty : but, above all, it was 
the act of a man comuiisioned by his own country, and 
paid b> this, for the enforcement of the laws and the 
p eservati n of society. No man more respects than I 
do the well-earned reputation of the British army | 

"It isn school 
Where every principle tending to honour 
Is taught — if followed." 

But in the name of that distinguished army, T here so- 
lera »Sy -tppeal £a us- an act, a kicb would b! g t its green- 
est laurels, and lay its trophies prostrate in the dust. 
L- 1 them war, but be it not <m domestic happiness : let 
them achieve a triumph wherever their banners fiy, 
but be it not over in -rals, innocence, and virtue. 8 know 
not by what palliation the defendant means to mitigate 
this enormity ; — will he pl»-ad her youth? it should have 
been her protection; — will lie plead her leuty ? 1 d ny 
the fact ; but even were it true, what is it to him ? what 
rigut has any man to speculate on the temperature of 
yo ir wives and your daughters, that he may defile your 
bed* or .desolate your habitation; W ill be plead po\er- 
ty ? L never knew a seducer or an adulterer thai did not. 



124 SPEECH IN THE CASE 01* 

He should have considered that before. But is poverty 
an excuse for crime ? Our law says, he who has not a 
purse to pay for it. must suffer for it in his person. It 
is a most wise declaration ; and for my part, I never 
hear such a person plead poverty, that my first emotion 
is not a thanksgiving, that Providence has denied, at 
least, the instrumentality of wealth to the accomplish- 
ment of his purposes. Gentlemen. I see you agree with 
me. I wave the topic ; and I again tell you. that if what 
I know will be his chief defence were true, it should avail 
him nothing. He had no right to speculate on this wretch- 
ed creature's levity to ruin her, and still less to ruin her 
family. Remember, however, gentlemen, that even had 
this wretched child been indiscreet, it is not in her name 
we ask for reparation ; no, it is in tho name of the pa- 
rents her seducer has heart-broken ; it is in the name of 
the poor helpless family he lias desolated ; it is in the 
name of that misery, whose sanctuary he has violated; 
it is in the name of law, virtue, and morality ; it is in the 
name of that country whose fair fame foreign envy will 
make responsible for this crime ; it is in the name of 
nature's dearest sympathies; it is in the name of all that 
gives your toil an object, and your ease a charm, and 
your age a ho^c— 1 ask from you the value of the poor 
maris child. 



SIPISSSS! 



OF 



BIR. PHILLIPS, 



IN 



€tjc Cafe of 22lafce fe. miming. 



DELIVERED IN 



3N THE COUNTY COURT-HOUSE, GAL WAY. 



May it please Yguv Lordship, 

The Plaintiff's Counsel tell me, Gentlemen, most 
unexpectedly? that they have closed his case, and it be- 
comes my duty to state to you that of the Defendant. — 
The nature of this action you have already heard. It is 
one which, in my mind, ought to be very seldom 
brought, and very sparingly encouraged. It is founded 
on circumstances of the most extreme delicacy, and it 
is intended to visit with penal consequences the non ob- 
servance of an engagement, which is of the most para- 
mount importance to society, and which of all others, 
perhaps, ought to be the most unbiassed, — an engage- 
ment which, if it be voluntary, judicious, and disinte- 
rested, generally produces the happiest effects ; but 
which, if it be either unsuitable or compulsory, engen- 
ders not only individual misery, but consequences uni~ 



i'26 speech i:sr the case or 

versally pernicious. There are Tew rontracta bet 
human beings which should be more deliberate than that 
of marriage. I admit it should be very cautioush pro- 
mised, but. even when promised, I am far from conced- 
ing that it should invariably be performed : a thousand 
circumstances may form an impediment, rhange of fur- 
tune may render it imprudent, change of affection may 
make it culpable. The very party to whom the law 
gives the privilege of complaint has perhaps the most 
reason to be grateful,— grateful that its happiness has 
not been surrendered to caprice ; grateful that Religion 
has not constrained an unwilling acquiescence, or made 
an unavoidable desertion doublv criminal, grateful th.it 
an offspring has not been sacrificed to the indelicate and 
ungenerous enforcement ; grateful that an innocent se- 
cret disinclination did not too late evince itself in an ir- 
resistable and irremediable di gust. You will agi'-e 
with m>», however, that if there exists any excuse fur 
such an action, it is on the side of the female, because 
e\^vy female object being more exclusively d mestic, 
such a disappointment is more severe in its visitation ; 
because the very circumstance concentrating their f el- 
ings renders them naturally more sensitive of a wound ; 
because their best treasure, their reputation, may have 
Buffered from the Intercourse^ because their chances of 
reparation are less, and their habitual exclusion makes 
then feel it more ; because there is something in the de- 
sertion of their helplessness which almost in -merge* the 
illegality in the unmanliness of the abandoning c. How- 
ever, if a man seeks to enforce this engagement, vwvj 
one feels some indelicacy attached to the requisition. I 
do not enquire into the comparative justn* s« of the rea- 
soning, but does not every one feel that there bppeara 
some meanness in forcing a female into an alliance ? Is 
it not almost saying, »• 1 will expose to public shame 
the credulity on which 1 practised, or you must pay to 
m • In moneys numbered, the profits of that heartless 
I .'.lion ; I have gambled with your affections, I 
have secured your bond, 1 will extort the penalty either 
from your purse or your reputation !" I put a ease to 
you where the Circumstances are recipocal, where age, 
fortune, situation, are the same, white (here is no dis- 
parity of years to make tin* supposition ludicrous, where 
there is no di -parity of fortune to render it suspicious. 



BfcAXTl V. WTLKIXS. 127 

Let us «ee whether the preset action can be b6 palliated, 
or whether it does not exhibit a picture of fraud and 
avarice, and meanness and hypoCricy, so laughable, 
that it is almost impossible to criticise it, and jet so (Is- 
basing, that human pride almosi forbids its Hdicu.e. 

It has been left to me to defend my unfortunate old 
client from the double battery oi Love and of Law, 
which at the age of sixty-five has so unexpected^ open- 
ed on her. Oh, Genth men, how vain glorious is the 
boast of beauty ! How misapprehended l^e been the 
charms »f youth, if years and wrinkles can thus despoil 
th-ir conquests and depopulate the navy of Its prowess; 
and begui!< the bar oi its eloquence ! 1 ow mistaken 
were all the amatory poets from Anarrron downwards, 
who preferred the bloom of the rose aru the thrill ot The 
nightingale, to the saffron bide and dulcet treble of six- 
ty' Vive ! E» en our own sweet bard has had the folly to 
declare, that 

1 ' He once had heard tell of an amorous youth 
Who was caught in his grandmother's bed; 
But owns he had ne er such a liquorish tooth, 
As to wish to be there in Ins stead." 

Iloya! wisdom ha« said, that we live in in a « New 
Er%." The rdgtt of old women has commenced, and if 
Johanna 8 lutficote converts England to her creed, why 
should no: Ireland, less pious perhaps, but at least equal- 
ly passionate, kneel before the shrine of ihe irresista- 
ble Widow Wilkjns. !'■ appears, Gentlemen, to have 
been h r happy fatr to have subdued particularly the 
dVath dealing profession*. Indeed, in the love episodes 
of (be heathen myth, logy, Mars and Venus were ( onsi- 
frsrvil its inseparable. 1 know hot whether any of you 
have ever seen a Very beautiful print representing the 
fatal glory of Q-.ehec, and the last moments of its im- 
mortal conquero — it* so, you must ba*e observed the 
figure of t*ie Staff physician, in whose arms the hero is 
expiring— that identical personage, my Lord, was the 
happy swain, who forty or fifty yea s ago, received the 
reward o! his valour and his skill in the virgin hand of 
tny venerable client! The Doctor lived something wore 
than a century, during a great parr of which Mrs. V\il- 
kins was bis companion— alas, gentlemen, long as he 
li\a), he Jived not long enough to behold her I 



i£S SPEECH IN THE CASE OP 

4, That beauty, like the Aloe flower, 
But blg&som'd and bloorn'd at lour score." 

Kc was, however, so far fascinated as to bequeath to her 
the legacies oi his patients, when he found he was pre- 
doomed to follow them. To this circumstance, very tar 
be it from me to hint, that Mrs. W. is indebted for any 
oi" lie* attractions. Rich, however, she undoubtedly was, 
and rich she would stili as undoubted!) have continued, 
had :t not been tor her intercourse with the family of 
the Plaintiff. 1 do not impute it as a cri.,.e to them that 
jned to he necessitous, but ( do impute it as 
criukiuai and ungrateful, that after Laving lived on 
prosit) of their friend, after having literally ex- 
most prodigal liberality, they should drag 
fier iuiirinities before the public ga~e, \ainiy supposing 
. could hide their own contemptible avarice in 
prominent exposure of her met an c hoi j dotage. 
The taller of the Plaintiff, it cannot be unknown to you, 
was I ) ears in the most indigent situation. Per- 

il 16 not a matter of conceal inent either, that he 
a in Mr*. Vtiihius a generous benefactress. She 
: . supported him, until at last his increasing 

d him to take refuge in an act of insol- 
y. During their intimacy, frequent allusion was 
..-. to a son whom Mrs. \\ likins had never seen since 
he was a child, and who had risen to a lieutenancy in the 
y, under the patronage of their relative, sir Bekja- 
Sl /u.MiiiiLD. In a parent's panegyric, the gall 
at was of course all that ever nope could picture. 
Young, gay, heroic, and d , the pride of the 

, the prop ot" the country, independent as the gale 
watted, and bounteous as the wave that bore him. I 
am ai'raid that it is rather an anticlimax to tell \ on after 
this, that tie is the present Plaintiff*. The eloquence of 
..ke was not exclusively confined to her enco- 
Lus on the lieutenant, btie diverged at times into an 
»de on the matrimonial felicities, painted the joy of 
love, and obscurely hinted that 
with hist .dan exact personification in 

. ,n Peter bearing a maich-ligut m ills Majesty's 

Hydra J — ,. se contrivances were ; 

g on .Mrs. W likins, a bye-plot was got up on board 
Ira, and Mr. returned to his mourning 

influenced, as he says, by his partiality for the 



BLAKE V. WILKINS. 129 

Defendant, but in reality compelled by ill health and dis- 
appointments, added, perhaps, to his mother's very ab- 
surd and avaricious speculations. What a loss the navy 
had of him, aud what a loss he had of the navy ! Alas, 
Gentlemen, he could not resist his affection for a female 
he never saw. Almighty love eclipsed thi- glories of am- 
bition — Trafalgar and St. Vincent flitted from his me- 
mory — he gave up all for woman, as Mark Antony did 
before him, and, like the Cupid in Hudibras, he 



took his stand 



Upon a Widow's jointure land — 
His> tender sigh and trickling tear 
Long'd for five hundred pounds a year; 
And languishing desires were fond 
Of Statute, Mortgage, Bill, and Bond!" 

— Oh, Gentlemen, only imagine him on the lakes of 
North America ! Alike to him the varieties of season or 
the vicissitude of warfare. One sovereign image mono- 
polizes his sensibilities. Does the storm rage? the Wi- 
dow Wilkins outsighs the whirlwind. Is the Ocean 
calm? it's mirror shows him the lovely Widow Wilkins. 
Is the battle won ? he thins his laurels that the Widow 
Wilkins may interweave her myrtles. Poes the broad- 
side thunder? he invokes the Widow Wilkins ! 

"A sweet little Cherub, she sits up aloft 
To keep watch tor the life of poor Peter !" 

—Alas, how much he is to he pitied ! How amply he 
should be recompensed ! Who but must mouin his sub- 
lime, disinterested, sweet-souled patriotism.' Who but 
must sympathise with his pure, ardenr, generous affec- 
tion ! — affection too confiding to require an interview ! 
— affection too warm to wait even for an introduction I 
Indeed, his Amanda herself seemed to think his love was 
most desirable at a distance, for at the very first visit 
after his return he was refused admittance. His capti- 
vating charmer was then sick and nurse-tended at her 
brother's house, after a winter's confinement, reflecting, 
more likely, rather on her funeral than her wedding. 
Mrs. Blake's avarice instantly took the alarm, and she 
wrote the letter which I shall now proceed to read to 
yon. 



13(1 SPEECH IN THE C4SE OF 

[Mr. Vandklkue. — My Lord, unwilling as T am to 
in arrapt a n 'atemei t which seems to create so universal 
a sensation, still I hope your Lordship will restrain 
Mr. Philips fr m reading a letter which cannot hereaf- 
ter b read in e\idence. 

Mr. O'Co^N ell rose for the purpose of supporting 
the propriety of toe course pursued by the Defendant's 
Counsel, rthen] 

Mr. Phillips resumed — My Lord, although ir is ut- 
terly i:. i possible for the learned Gentleman to say, in 
what manner hereafter this letter might be made evi- 
dence, still my cast- is too strong to require any ca il- 
ling uj)on s irh trifles. 1 am content to save the public 
time, and wave the perusal oF the letter However* tbpy 
have now given its suppression an importance \\h ch 
perhaps it* production could not have procured f«>r it. 
You see. Gentlemen, what a case they h ve when they 
insist on the withholding of the d cuments which origi- 
nated vxifli themselves. I accede to their very polite in- 
terfereufe. 1 grant them, since ihey intreat it, the 
mercu of nil} ^iUnce. Certain it is, however, that a let- 
ter was received from Mrs. Bi >k • : and that almost im- 
mediately after its receipt, Miss Blake intruded herself 
at Brownvitte, where Mrs. Willy ins was— remained two 
bitterly her not iiaving appeared to the 
lieutenant, when he called to v isit her — said that her 
poor mother had set Ir r heart on an alliance — that she 
wa~* sure, dear wontan* a disappointment would be the 
dea^h of her; in short, that there was no alternative but 
nnb or the altar ! To all this Mrs. v. i I kins unly 
repli< >U how totally ignorant the parties most inter* s id 
were 'i each other, and that were she even inclined to 
lect herself with a stranger (poor old foal ! the debts 
in which her generosity to the family had a! read) in- 
volved her, formed, at leas' for the present, an insur- 
mountable impediment. ibis was not sufficient. In 
less than a week, the indefatigable Miss Blake returned 
to the charge, acti ally armed with an old family bond 
to pay off the incumbrance, and a renewed represenia- 
ti mi of the mother's suspense and the br< ther's drspera- 
fcion. You will not fail to observe, Gentlemen, that 
winle the female conspirators were thus at work, th* 
ln\er him r ersn seen the object of /ir.s iilola- 

in the farce, he fell in love with 



BLAKE V. WILKTKS. 131 

the picture of his grandmother. Like a prince of the 
blood, he was willing to woo and to be wedded by proxy. 
For the gratification of his 'avarice, he was < -ontented 
to embrace age, disease, infirmity, and widowhood — 
to bind his youthful passions t:» the carcase for which Hie 
grave was opening— to feed by anticipation on the un- 
sold corpse, and cheat the worm of its reversionary cor* 
ruption. Educated iu a profession proverbially gene- 
rous, he offered to barter every joy for money ! Born 
in a country ardent to a fault, he advertised his haopi- 
ness to the highest bidder ! and he now solicits an ho- 
nourable jury to become the pander* to this heartless cu- 
pidity ! I'h is beset, haerassed, conspired against, 
their miserable victim entered into the contract you^have 
heard— a contract conceived in meanness, extorted by 
fraud, and sought to he enforced by the most pmflig. te 
c ns piracy Trace it through every stage of its pro? 
gress, in its origin, its means, its effects — f.-om the 
parent contriving it through the sacrifice of her s u, and 
forwarding it through tin indelicate instrumentality of 
her daughter, down to the son himself uublnshingly aft- 
ceding to the atrocious combination by which age was 
to he betrayed and youth degraded, and the odious onion 
of decrepid lust and precocious avarice blasphemously 
©onsecrat d by the solemnities of Religion ! Is this the 
example which as parents you would sanction ? Is this 
the principle you would adopt yourselves? Hate you 
never witnessed the misery of an unmatched marriage? 
Have \ ou never worshipped the bliss by which it has 
been hallowed, when its torch, kindled at affection's al- 
tar, gives the noon of life its warmth and its lustre, and 
blesses its evening with a more chastened, but not less 
lovely illumination ? Are you prepared to say, that this 
rite of heaven, revered by each country, cherished by 
each sex, the solemnity of every Church and the Sactm- 
ment of one, shall be profaned into the ceremonial of 
an obscene and soul-degrading avarice ! 

No sooner was this contract, the device of their co- 
vet >usness and the evidence of their shame, swindled 
from the wretched o> ject of this conspiracy, than its 
motive became apparent ; they avowed themselves the 
keepers of their melancholy victim ; they watch her 
movements ; they dictated her actions ; they forbade all 
intercourse with her own brother ; they duped her into 



132 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

accepting bills, and let her be arrested f >r the amount. 
They exercised the most cruel and capricious tyranny 
upon her, now menaoci ng her with the publication of 
her follies, and now with the still more horrible enforce- 
ment of a contract that thus betrayed its anticipated in- 
flictions! Can you imagine a more disgusting exhibition 
of how weak and how worthless human nature may be, 
than this scene exposes ? On the one hand, a combina- 
tion of sex and age, disregarding the mo9t sacred obli- 
gations, and trampling on the most tender ties, from a 
mean greediness of lucre, that neither honour or grati- 
tude or nature could appease. "Lucri bonus est odor exre- 
qnalibet" On the other hand, the poor shrivelled relic 
of what once was health, and youth, and animation, 
sought to be embraced iu its infection, and arrcssed in 
its infirmity— crawled over and corrupted by the human 
reptiles, before death had shovelled it to the less odious 
and more natural vermin of the grave ' ! What an ob- 
ject for the speculation of avarice J What art angel or 
the idolatry of youth! Gentlemen, when this miserable, 
dupe to her own d mating vanity and the vice of others, 
saw how she was treated — when she found herself con- 
trilled bv the mother, beset by the daughter, beggared 
by the father, and held hy the son as a kind ot windfall, 
that, too rotten to keep its hold, had fallen at hi<- feet to 
be squeezed and trampled ; when she saw the Intercourse 
of her relatives prohibited, the most trifling remembran- 
ces, of her ancient friendship denied, the very exercise 
cf her habitual charity denounced ; when she saw that all 
she was worth was to be surrendered to a family confis- 
cation, and that she was herself to be gib^etted in the 
chains of wedlock, an example to every superannuated do- 
tard, upon whose plunder the ravens of the world might 
calculate, she came to the wisest determination of her 
life, and decided that her fortune should remain at her 
own disposal. Acting upon tins decision, she wrote to 
Mr. Blake, complaining of the cruelty with which she 
hatl been treat**!, desiring the restoration of the con- 
tract of which she had been duped, and declaring, as the 
only means of securing respect, her final determination 
as to the controul over her property. To this letter, ad- 
dressee! to the son, a verbal answer (mark the conspira- 
cy) was returned from the mother, withholding all con- 
the property was setled on her family, but 



BLAKE V. WILKINS. 133 

withholding the contract at the same time. The wretch- 
ed old woman could not sustain the conflict. She was 
taken seriously ill, confined for many months in her bro- 
ther's house, from whom she was so cruelly sought to he 
separated, until the debts in which she was involved and 
a recommenced change of scene transferred her to Dublin. 
There she was received with the utmost kindness by her 
relative, Mr. Mar- Namara, to whom she confided the 
delicacy and distress of her situation. That gentleman, 
acting at once as her agent and her friend, instantly re- 
paired to Galway, whore he had an interview with Mr. 
Blake —this was long before the. commencement of any 
action. A conversation took place between them on the 
subject, whir h must <n mind, set the present action at 
rest altogether: because it must show that the nonper- 
formance of the contract originated entirely with the 
plaintiff himself. Mr. Mac Namara inquired whether 
it were not true, that Mr. Blake's own family declined 
any connexion, unless Mrs, Wilkins consented to settle 
on them the entire of her property? Mr. Blake replied 
it was. Mr. Mac Namara rejoined, that her contract 
did not bind her to any such extent. "No," replied Mr. 
Blake, <•! know it does not; however, tell Mrs. Wilkins 
tl at * understand she has about 580/. a year, and I will 
-fa ollienl to settle the odd 80/ on her by way of pocket mo- 
ney.' 9 Here, of course, the conversation ended, which 
Mr. Mac Namara detailed, as he was desired, to Mrs. 
Wilkins. who rejected it with the disdain, which, I hope, 
it will excite in every honourable mind. Atopic* howe- 
ver, arose during the interview, which unfolds the mo- 
tives and illustrates the mind of Mrs. Blake more than 
any observation which I can make on it. As one of the 
inducements to the projected marriage, he actually pro- 
posed the prospect of a 50/. annuity as an officer's wi- 
dow's pension, to which she would be entitled in the 
event of his decease ! 1 will not stop to remark on the 
delicacy of this inducement — 1 will not dwell on the ridi- 
cule of the anticipation — I will not advert to the glaring 
doatage on which he speculated, when he could seriously 
hold out to a woman of her years the prospect of such 
an improbable survivorship. But I do ask you, of what 
materials must the man be composed who could thus de- 
base the national liberality! What! was the recompense 
*f that lofty heroism which has almost appropiated to 



1S4 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

the British nary the monopoly of maritime renown — 
was that grateful offering which a weepingcountry pours 
into the lap of its patriot's widow, and into the cradle of 
its warrior's orphan — was that g< nerous consolation with 
which a nation's gratitude cheers the last moments of 
her dying hero, by the portraiture of his children sustain- 
ed and « nobled hy the legacj of his achievements, to he 
thus deliberately perverted into the bribe « fa base, re- 
luctant, unnatural prostitution! Oh! I know nothing to 
parallel the self abasement of such a deed except the 
audacity that require'- an honorable Jury to abet it. The 
following letter from Mr. Anthony Martin, Mr. Blake's 
attorney, unf Ided the future plans of this unfeeling con- 
spiracy. Perhaps the GentI men would wish also to cushion 
this document? The;* do not Then I sTall read it. The 
letter is addressed to Mrs. Wilkins. 

" Mad\m, " Galway 9 Jan. 9. 1817. 

« I have been applied to professionally hy Lieutenant 
Peter Blake to take proceedings against you on rather 
an unpleasant occasion ; but, from every letter of youi*' 
and other documents, together with the material and ir- 
reparable, loss Mr. Blake has sustained in bin profes- 
sional prospects, by means of your proposals to him. 
makes it indispensably necessary for him to get remune- 
ration from you. Under these circumstances, I am 
obliged to say, that I have his directions to take imme- 
diate proceedings against y n, unless lie is in some mea- 
sure compensated tor your breach of conduct and pro- 
mise to him. I should feel happy that you would save 
me the necessity of acting professionally by setfii g the 
business, [You see, Gentlemen, money, money, money, 
runs through the whole amour,] and not suffer it to 
come to a public investigation, particularly, as I con- 
ceive from the legal advice Mr. Blake has got, together 
with ail I have seen, it will ultimately terminate most 
honourably to his advantage, and to your pecuniary 
loss. 

•'* I have the honour to remain, Madam, 
«« Your very humble Servant, 

<* Anthony Martin." 

Indeed, T think Mr. Anthony Mar' in is mistaken. In- 
deed, 1 think nc twelve men upon their waths will &ay 



BLAKE V. WIXKINS. 135 

(even admitting th«> truth of all he asserts) that it was 
honourable for a British officer to abandon the navy on 
such a speculation — lo desert so noble a profession — to 
fori it he ambition it ought to have associated — the rank 
to whi h it leads— the gl-ry it may confer, for the pur- 
pose of extorting from an old woman he never saw the 
purchase money of his degradation ! But I resc ;e the 
Piainfiff from this disgraceful imputation. I cannot be- 
lieve that a member of a profession not less remarkable 
for the valour than 'he generosity of its spirit — a profes- 
sion as proverbial for its profusion in the harbour a> for 
the prodigality of its life-blood on the wave —a profession 
ever wiling to fling m n > to the winds, and only anx- 
ious that iliey should watt hrough th world its immor- 
ta. banner crimsoned with the record of a thousand victo- 
ries .' No, no, Gentlemen; notwithstanding the great 
authority of Mr. Anthony Martin, 1 rannoi readily be- 
liev that any man could he found *o m;<ke the high ho- 
nour uf :his noble service a base, mercenary, sullen 
pander to the prostitution of his youth ! The fat t is, 
thai increasing ill health, and ;he improbability of pro- 
motion, combined to induce his retirement on half pay. 
You will find this confirmed by the date of his resigna- 
tion, which was immediately after the battle of Water- 
loo, which settled (no matter how) the destinies of Eu- 
rope. Bis constitution was declining, his advancement 
was annihilated, and as a forlorn hope, he bombarueil 
the \\ idow \\ ilkins 

" » ar thoughts had left their places vacant ; 
In tneir room came thronging, soil and amorous desires ; 
Ail teili ig hi n how fair — youn^ rlero was.' 5 

He first. Gentlemen, attacked her fortune with herself, 
through the a tillery of the Church, and having failed in 
that, he now ai arks her fortune without herself, through 
the assistance of the law. However, if 1 am instructed 
rightly, he has nonody but himself to blame for his dis- 
app diriment. Observe, 1 do not vouch for the authen- 
ticity of this fact; but I do certainly assure you, that 
Mrs, W ilkins was persuaded of it. You know the pro- 
verbial frailty ot our nature. The gallant Lieutenant 
was no! five from it ! Perhaps you imagine thar some 
you igvi*. or, accordi - ta. ; e some older fair one, 

weaned him from the widow. Inueed tney did not. He 



1S6 SPEECH IN THE CASE Ob 

had no heart to lose, and yet (can you solve the para- 
dox ?) his infirmity was love. As the Poet says— 

(LOVE—STILL LOVE." 

No, it was not to Venus, it was to Bacchus, he sa- 
crificed. With an eastern idolatry he commenced at 
day-light, and so persevering was his piety till the shades 
of night, that when he was not on his knees, he could 
scarcely be said to be on his legs ! When I came to this 
passage, I could not avoid involuntary exclaiming, Oh, 
Peter, Peter, whether it he in liquor or in love — 

" None but thyself can be thy parallel" 

" I see by your smiling, Gentlemen, that you correct 
my error. I perceive your classic memories recurring 
to, perhaps, the only prototype to be found in history. 
I beg his pardon. I should not have overlooked 



the immortal Captain Wattle, 



Who was all for love aud — a little for the bottle.'' 

Ardent as our fair ones have been announced to be, they 
do not prefer a flame that is so exclusively spiritual. 
Widow W T ilkins, no doubt, did not choose to be singular. 
In the words of the bard, and, my Lord, I perceive you 
•xcuse my dwelling so much on the authority of the mu- 
ses, because really on this occasion the minstrel seems to 
have combined the powers of poetry — in the very words 
of the Bard, 

''He asked her, would she marry him Widow Wilkins an- 

swer'd No — 

Then said he, I'll to the Ocean rock, I'm ready for the 
slaughter, 

Oh ! — I'll shoot at my sad image, as its sighing in the wa- 
ter— 

Only think of Widow Wilkins, saying— Go Peter — Go ! 

But, Gentlemen, let us try to be serious, and seriously 
give me leave to ask you, on what grounds does he soli- 
cit your verdict ? in it for the loss of his profession ? Docs 
he deserve compensation if he abandoned it for such a 
purpose — if he deserted at once his duty and his country 
to trepan the weakness a wealthy dotard ? But did he 



SI.4KB T. WILKINS, 1S7 

(base as the pretence is,) did he do so? Ts there nothing 
to cast any suspicion on the pretext ? nothing in the as- 
pert of public affairs ? in the universal peace ? in the un- 
certainty of being put in comr issicn ? in the downright 
impossibility of advancement ? Nothing to make you sus- 
pect that he imputes as a contrivance, what was the ma- 
nifest result of an accidental contingency ? Does he 
claim on the ground of sacrificed affection? Oh Gentlemen, 
only fancy what he has lost — if it were but the blessed 
raptures of the bridal night I Do not suppose I am going 
to describe it ; I shall leave it to the learned Counsel 
he has selected to compose his epithalanium. I shall 
not exhibit the venerable trembler— at once a relic and a 
relict ; with a giace for every year and a cupid in every 
wrinkle-^affecting to shrink from the flame of his im- 
patience, and fanning it with the ambrosial sigh ofsixty- 
five !! I cannot paint the. fierce meridian transports of 
the honeymoon, gradually melting into a more chasten- 
ed and permanent affection — every nine months adding a 
link to the chain of their delicate embraces, until, too 
soon, Death's broadside lays the Lieutenant low, conso- 
ling, however, his patriarchal charmer (old enough at 
the time to be the last wife of Mtthusalem) with a fifty 
pound annuity, being the balance of his ghry against His 
Majesty's Ship, the Hydra!! 

Give me leave to ask you, is this one of the cases, to 
meet which, this very rare and delicate action was in- 
tended ? Is this a case where a reciprocity of circumstan- 
ces, of affection, or of years, throw even a shade of ra- 
tionality over the contract ? Do not imagine 1 mean to in- 
sinuate, that under no circumstances ought such a pro- 
ceeding to be adopted. Do not imagine, though I say 
this action belongs more natiually to a female, its adop- 
tion can never be justified by ore of the other sex. Without 
any great violence to my imagination, I can suppose a man 
in the very spring of lifr, young, lovely, talented, and 
accomplished, concentrating, as he thought, every charm 
of personal perfection, and in whom those charms were 
only heightened by the modesty that veiled them ; perhaps 
his preference was encouraged ; his affection returned ; 
his very sigh echoed until he was conscious of his exis- 
tence but by the soul-creating sympathy— until the vt orld 
seemed but the residence of his love, and that love th« 

T 



18S flTOffCH IV 9WT, CASK OT 

principle that gave it auim tion —until, before the «m?le 
of •■> r affection, 'e whole spectral train of sorrow va- 
nished, and t*iis world of wo, with all its i ar- s and mise- 
ries u» ! primes brightened as by enchantment info 
anticipated paradise \\ It might happen that this divine 
affection migh be crushed, aw' that heai enly vision wither 
into air at rhe hell-e rjendered pestilence of parental ava- 
rice, leaving voti*h and health, and worth and happiness. a 
sacrifice to its unna'ural and mercenary caprir- s. pvr am 
I from saying that such a case would not call for ext ia- 
ti«>i, particularly Where the purishment fell upon the <e- 
rv vice in whi'h the ruin had origin -ted. Yet e\enther« 
perhaps an honourable mind would rather despise the 
nitMii, unmerited desertion. Oh, I am sure a sensitive 
mind would rather droop uncomplaining into the grave, 
-than solicit the mockery of a. worldly compensation ! But 
in th?- cas before you, is there the slightest ground for 
supposing any affection ? Do you believe, if any accident 
bereft the defendant of her fortune, that her persecutor 
w > :ld \m likely to retain his constancy? Do you believe 
that the manic ge thus sought to be enforced, was one 
likely to promote morality and virtue? Do you believe 
t'ia : tho-e delicious fruits by wich the struggles af -sin* 
rial life art- sweetened, and the anxieties of parental care 
alleviated, were ever once ant cipaVd ? Do you think 
t t such a» union could exhibit Miose recipr -cities of 
love and endearments by which this tender rite should 
b consecrated and recommended? Do you not rather 
be : ie\e that it originated in avarice — that it was promo- 
ted hy conspiracy — and that it would perhaps have. 
Lowered through some months of crime, and then termi- 
nated in a heartless and disgusting abandonment ? 

Gentlemen, these are the questions w' if h you will 
dis • ss in your Jury-room. I am not afraid of your 
derision. Remember I ask you for no mitigation of 
damages. Nothing less than your verdict will satisfy 
n;e, By that verdict you will sustain the dignit) of 
r six— by that verdict you will uphold the honour of 
th: national character — hy that \erdict you will assure. 
n i o».i> tin* immense multitude of both sexes that thus 
s • unusaaliy crouds around you. but the whole rising 
g< >i >our count: v, 1 hat marriage can never be 

attended with tumour or blessed withhappiit ss, tj,thasn<rt 



BLVKF, V. WILKTNI, 13$ 

Us origin in mutual affection, I surrender with ronS lence 
my case to your decision. 

[The 'la-nage? were laid at 5010J. and the Phintiff* Counsel 
iff re, in the -) I. • >.iteuted to withdraw a Juror, and let nna 
pa/ nif own Costi.3 



A CHARACTER 



NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE, 



DOWN TO THfc PERIOD &t HIS 



<£#Ie to C3£6a 



Hfi 1 8 FALLEN ! 

We may now pause before that splendid prodigy, 
which tottered amongst us like some ancient ruin, whose 
frown fiefWfieS the glance its magnificence attracted. 

Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon the throne, 
a sceptred hermit, wrapt in the solitude of his own ori- 
ginality. 

A mind bold, independent, and decisive — a will, des- 
potic in its dictates— an energy that distanced ex- 
pedition, and a conscience pliable to every touch of 
interest, marked the outline of this extraordinary cha- 
racter — the most extraordinary, perhaps, that, in the 
annals of this world, ever rose, or reigned, or fell. 

Flung into life, in the midst of a Revolution, that 
quickened every energy of a people who acknowledged 
no superior, he commenced his course, a stranger by 
birth* and a scholar by charity I 



142 efTlRACTER OF N. BTjroY4.P4RTE. 

Wiii no friend but his sword, and n > fortune hut his 
talents, he rushed into the ihts where rank, ai>d uvea th* 
and genius had arrayed themselves, and coin < 
fled from him as from the glance- of destiny. He knew 
no motive but interest— he aknowledg<d no criterion 
but. success — he worshipped no God but ambitioe, and 
with an eastern devotion he knelt at the shrine of his 
Idolatry. Subsidiary to this, there was no creed that 
be did not profess, there was no opinion that he did n t 
pi mjulgate; in the hope <>f a dynasty, he uphel<> t e 
Crescent : for the sake of a divorce, he bowed before 
the Civss: the orphan of JSt. Louis, he became (he 
adopted child >f the Republic; and with a parricidal 
ingratitude, on the ruins both of the tin one and the tri- 
bune, he reared the throne of his despotism. 

\ professed Catholic, he imprisoned the 'ope ; a pre* 
I tended pal riot, he impoverished the country ; and in the 
name of Brutus*, he grasped without remorse, and wore 
Without shame, the diadem of the Csesars ! 

Through this pantomime of his policy, fortune placed 
the clown to his caprices. At his touch, crowns ecu )- 
bled, beggars reigned, systems vanished, the wiloesfc 
tie riestook the colour of his whim, and all that was 
venerable, and all that was novel, changed places with 
the rapidity of a drama. Even apparent defeat assumed 
tin* appearance of victory — his flight from Egypt con- 
firmed his destiny — ruin itself only elevated him to 
empire. 

But if his fortune was great, his genius was trans- 
aendent; decision flashed upon his counsels ; and it waa 
the same to decide and to perform. To inferior intel- 
lects, his combinations appeared perfectly imp>ssi»»|e, 
bis plans perfectly impracticable; but in his hands siin# 
plicity marked their developement, and success viudi- 
tated their adoption. 

His person partook the character of his mind— -if the 
one never yielded in the cabinet, the other never bent in 
the field. 

Nature had no obstacles that he did not surmount— 
space no opposition that he did not spurn ; and whether 
ami vlpine rocks, .Arabian sands, or polar snows, be 

* In his hypocritical cant after Liberty, in the commence.- 
aaent of the Revolution, h« assumed the nam* ©i fcrutua— •*■ 
Vit>o i'uutu J 



CHAHACTEB OF If. BUONAPARTE. 146 

seemed proof against peril, atid empt vcrer! with 'bi- 
qu'tv ! The whole continent of Europe trembled at be- 
ho '-i?»g the audacity of his designs, aid the miracle of 
their execution. Scepticism bowed to the prodigies of 
his performance ; romance assumed the air of history ; 
nor was there ought too incredible for belief, or too fan- 
ciful for expectation, when the world saw a subaltern of 
Corsica waving his imperial flag over her most ancient 
capitals. All the visions of antiquity became common 
places in his contemplation ; kings were his people-— 
nations were his outposts ; and he disposed of courts, 
and crowns, and camps, and churches, and cabinets, as 
if they were the titular dignitaries of the chess board \ 

Amid all these changes he stood immutable as adamant. 
It mattered little whether in the field or the drawing room 
— with the mob or the levee — wearing the jacobin bon- 
net or the iron crown — banishing a Braganza, or espous- 
ing a Hapshurg^-dictating peace on a rait to the ( zar 
of Russia, or contemplating defeat at the gallows of Leip- 
sic — he was still the same military despot ! 

Cradled in the camp, he was to the last hour the dar- 
ling of the army ; and whether in the camp or the cabinet 
he never forsook a friend or forgot a favour. Of all 
his soldiers, not one abandoned him, till affection was 
useless, and their first stipulation was for the safety of 
their favourite. 

They knew well that if he was lavish of them, he was 
prodigal of himself; and that if he exposed them to 
peril, he repaid them with plunder. For the soldier, he 
subsidized every people ; to the people he made even pride 
pay tribute. The victorious veteran glittered wi h .his 
gains; and the capital, gorgeous with the spoils of art, 
became the miniature metropolis of ^the universe. In 
this wonderful combination, his affection of literature 
must not be omitted. The gaoler of tlre^press, he affect- 
ed the patronage of letters — the proscribe!* of books, he 
encouraged philosophy — h^ persecutor of authors, and 
the murderer of printers, he yet pretended to the protec- 
tion of learning !— the assassin of Palm, the silencer of 
De Stael, and the denouncer of Kotzebue, he was the 
friend of David, the benefactor of !>e Lille, and sent his 
academic prize to the philosopher of England*. 

♦Sir Humphry Divy wai transmitted the first prize of the 
Academy ot Sciences. 



144 CHARACTER OF IT. BUONAPARTE. 

Such a medley of contradictions, and at the §ame time 
such an individual consistency, were never united in the 
same character— A Royalist— A Republican and an Em- 
peror—a Mahometan— a Catholic and a patron of the 
Synagogue— a Subaltern and a Sovereign— a Traitor 
and a Tyrant — a Christian and an Infidel— he was, 
through all his vicissitudes, the same stern, impatient, 
inflexible original— the same mysterious incoraprehensi. 
ble self— the man without a model, and without a sha- 
dow. 

His fall, like his life, baffled all speculation. In short, 
his whole history was like a dream to the world, and no 
man can tell how or why he was awakened from the re. 
verie. 

Such is a faint and feeble picture of Napoleon Bvona- 
pa<-te, the first (and it is to he hoped the last) Emperor 
of the French. 

That lie has done much evil there is little doubt ; that 
be has been the origin of much good, there is just as lit- 
tle. Through his means, intentional or not, Spain, Por- 
tugal, and France have arisen to the blessing of a Free 
Constitution; Superstition has found her grave in the 
ruins of the inquisition* ; and the Feudal system, with 
its whole train of tyrannic satellites, has fled for ever-- 
ILings may learn from him that their safest study, as well 
as their noblest, is the interest of the people ; the peo- 
ple are taught by him that there is no despotism so stu- 
pendous against which they have not a resource ; and to 
those who would rise upon the ruins of both, he is a liv- 



est 



ng lesson that if ambition can raise them from the low- 
est station, it can also prostrate them from the highest. 

*What melancholy reflections does not this sentence awaken; 
But three years have elapsed since it was written, and in that 
short space all the good effected by Napoleon has been t rased 
by the Legitimates, ani the most questionable parts of his cha- 
rirter badly imitated !— His successors want nethmg but tort 



r-acter badlf 

3*nifl 



8 IP 3 21 (BIB 



DELIVERED BY 



MR. PHILLIPS, 



IN 



/$|je <ffa£e of 25fofte b. SProbmt* 

• 



■*|fjf Zord and Gentlemen, 

I am instructed by the plaintiff to lay his case before 
you, and little do I wonder at the great interest which 
it seems to have excited. It is one of those cases which 
come home to the " business and the bosoms" of man- 
kind — it is not confined to the individuals concerned 5 
it visits every circle from the highest to the lowest ; it 
alarms the very heart of the community, and commands 
the whole social family to the spot, where human na- 
ture prostrated at the bar of public justice calls aloud fop 
pity and protection ! On my first addressing a jury 
upon a subject of this nature, I took the high ground to 
which I deemed myself entitled : I stood upon the puri- 
ty of the nation ; I relied upon that chastity which cen- 
turies had made proverbial, and almost drowned the cry 
of individual suffering in the violated reputation of the 
country. Humbled and abashed, X must resign the to- 
ir - 



146 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

pic ; resignation at the novelty of the offence has given 
way to horror at the frequency of its repetition • it is 
now becoming almost fashionable amongst us ; we are 
importing the follies, and naturalizing the vices of the 
continent ; scarcely a term passes in these courts, during 
which some abashed adulterer or seducer does not an- 
nounce himself improving on the odiousness of his of- 
fence, by the profligacy of his justification, and as it 
were, struggling to record, by crimes, the desolating 
progress of our barbarous civilization. Gentlemen, if 
this be suffered to continue, what home shall be safe, 
what hearth shall be sacred, what parent can, for a mo- 
ment, calculate on the possession of his child, what child 
shall be secure against the orphanage that springs from 
prostitution ; what solitary right, whether of life or of 
liberty, or property in the land, shall survive amongst 
us, if that hallowed couch which modesty has veiled, and 
love endeared, and religion consecrated, is to be invaded 
by a vulgar and promiscuous libertinism ! A time there 
was when that couch was inviolable in Ireland — when 
conjugal infidelity was deemed but an invention— when 
marriage was considered as a sacrament of the heart, and 
faith and affection sent a mingled flame together from 
the altar ; are such times to dwindle into a legend of tra- 
dition ! are the dearest rights of man, and the holiest 
ordinances of God, no more to he respected ! Is the 
marriage vow to become but the prelude to perjury and 
prostitution ! Shall our enjoyments debase themselves 
into an adulterous participation, and our children pro- 
pagate an incestuous community ! Hear the case which 
I am fated to unfold, and then tell me whether a single 
virtue is yet to linger amongst us with impunity — whe- 
ther honour, friendship or hospitality, are to be sacred 
—whether that endearing confidence by which the bit- 
terness of this life is sweetened, is to become the instru- 
ment of a perfidy beyond conception ; and whether the 
protection of the roof, the fraternity of the board, the 
obligations of the altar, and the devotion of the heart, 
are to be, so many panders to the hellish abominations 
they should have purified— Hear the case which must go 
forth to the world, but which 1 trust in God your ver- 
dict will accompany, to tell that world, that if there was 
vice enough amongst us to commit the crime, there is 



BROWNE V. BL4KB, 147 

virtue enough to brand it with an indignant punish* 
meut. 

Of the plaintiff, Mr. Brown, it is quite impossible 
but you must have heard much — his misfortune has given 
Mm a sad celebrity, and it does seem a peculiar inci- 
dent to such misfortune that the loss of happiness is al- 
most invariably succeeded by the deprivation of charac- 
ter. As the less guilty murderer will hide the corse 
that may lead to his detection, so does the adulterer, by 
obscuring the reputation of his victim, seek to diminish 
the moral responsibility he has incurred. Mr. Browne 
undoubtedly forms no exception to this system — betrayed 
by his friend, and abandoned by his wife, his too gene- 
rous confidence, his too tender love has been slanderous- 
ly perverted into the sources of his calamity — because 
he would not tyrannise over her whom he adored, he 
was careless — because he could not suspect him in whom 
lie trusted, he was careless ; and crime in the infatua- 
tion of its cunning found its justification even on the vir- 
tues of its victim! I am not deterred by the prejudice 
thus cruelly excited — I appeal from the gossiping credu- 
lity of scatidal to the grave decisions of fathers and of 
husbands, and I implore of you* as you value the bles- 
sings of your home, not to countenance the calumny 
which solicits a precedent to excuse their spoliation. At 
the close of thp year 1809, the death of my client's fa- 
ther gave him the inheritance of an ample fortune. Of 
all the joys his prosperity created, there was none but 
yielded to the extacy of sharing it with her he loved, the 
daughter of his father's ancient friend, the respectable 
proprietor of Oran castle. She was then in the \ery 
spring ot life, and never did the sun of heaven unfold 
a lovelier blossom ; her look was beauty and her breath 
was fragrance ; the eye that saw her caught a lustre from 
the vision ; and all the virtues seemed to linger round 
her, like so many bpotless spirits enamoured of her love- 
liness. 

" Yes a she was good as she was fair, 
None, none on earth above her, 
As pure in thought as angels are, 
To see her, was to love her." 

"What years of tongueless transport might not her 
happj husband have anticipated ! What one addition 



14S SPEECH IN THE CASE 0E 

could her beauties gain to render them all perfect ! In 
the connubial rapture there was only one, and she was 
blessed with it. A lovely family of infant children gave 
ber the consecrated name of mother, and with it all that 
heaven can ghe of interest to this world's worthlessness, 
Can the mind imagine a more delightful vision than that 
of such a mother, thus young, thus lovely, thus beloved, 
blessing a husband's heart, basking in a world's smile ; 
and while she breathed into her little ones, the moral 
light, showing them that robed in all the light of beauty, 
it was still possible for their virtues to cast it into the 
shade. Year after year of happiness rolled on, and eve- 
ry year but added to their love, a pledge to make it 
happier than thr former. Without ambition but the 
husband 1 ** love, without one object but her children's 
happiness, this lovely woman, circled in her orbit, all 
bright, all beauteous in the prosperous hour, and if that 
hour e'er darkened, onlv beaming the brighter and the 
livelier. What human hand could mar so pure a pic- 
tore ? — What punishment could adequately visit its vio- 
lation ! 

" Oh, happy love, where love like thi9 is found ! 
Oh heart-felt rapture ! bliss beyond compare !" 

It was indeed the summer of their lives, and with it 
Came the swarm of summer friends, the revel in the sun- 
shine of the hour, and vanish with its splendour. High 
and honored in that crowd~most gay, most cherished, 
most professing, stood the defendant, Mr. Blake. Be 
was the plaintiff's dearest, fondest friend, to every plea- 
sure railed, in e>ery case consulted, his day's compa- 
nion, and his evening guest, his constant, trusted, bo- 
som confidant, and under guise of all, oh human na- 
ture ! he v\as his tellest, deadliest, final enemy ! Here, 
on the authority of this brief do I arraign him, of hav- 
ing wound himself into my client's intimacy — of having 
encouraged that intimacy into friendship, of having 
counterfeited a sympathy in his joys and in his sorrows; 
and when he seemed too pure even for scepticism itself 
to doubt him, of having under the very sanctity of his 
roof, perpetrated an adultery the most unprecedented 
and perfidious ? If this be true, can the world's wealth 
defrav the penalty of such turpitude ? Mr. Browne, gen- 



BROWNE V. BLAKE. 149 

iemen, was ignorant of every agricultural pursuit, and, 
unfortunately adopting the advice of his father-in-law, 
he cultivated the amusements of the Curragh. J say 
unfortunately, for his own affairs, and by no means in 
reference to the pursuit itself. It is not for me to libel 
an occupation which the highest, and noblest, and most 
illustrious throughout the empire, countenance by their 
adoption, which fashion and virtue graces by its atten- 
dance, and in which, peers and legislators and princes 
are not ashamed to appear conspicuous. But if the mo- 
rality that countenances it be doubtful, by what epithet 
shall we designate that which would make it an apology 
for the most profligate of offences ? Even if Mr. Browne's 
pursuits were ever so erroneous, was it for his bosom 
friend to take advan- age of them to ruin him ? Oil this 
subject, it is sufficient for me to remark, that under cir- 
cumstances of prosperity or vicissitudes, was their con- 
nubial happiness ever even remotely clouded ? In fact, 
the plaintiff disregarded even the amusements that de- 
prived him of her society. He took a house for her in 
the vicinity of Kildare, furnished it with all that luxury 
could require, and afforded her the greatest of all lux- 
uries, that of enjoying and enhancing his most prodigal 
affection. From the hour of their marriage, up to the 
unfortunate discovery, they lived on terms of the utmost 
tenderness ; not a word, except one of love ; not an act* 
except of mutual endearment, passed between them. — 
INow, gentlemen, if this be proved to you, here I take 
my stand, and 1 say, under no earthly circumstances, 
can a justification of the adulterer be adduced. No mat- 
ter with what delinquent sophistry he may blaspheme 
through its palliation, God ordained, nature cemented, 
happiness consecrated that celestial union, and it is com- 
plicated treason against God and man, and society, 1o 
intend its violation. The social compact, through every 
fibre trembles at its consequences; not only policy but 
law, not only law, but nature, not only nature but re- 
ligion, deprecate and denounce it, — parent and offspring. 
— youth and age — the dead from the tombs — the child 
from its* cradle,— creatures scarce alive, and creatures 
still unborn ; the grandsire shivering on the verge of 
death ; the infant quickening in the mother's womb ; all 
with one assent re-echo God. and execrate adultery! I 



150 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

say, then, where it is once proved that husband and wife 
live together in a state of happiness, no contingency on 
which the sun can shine, can warrant any man in at- 
tempting their separation; Did they do so ? That is 
imperatively your first consideration. 1 only hope that 
all the hearts religion has joined together, may have en- 
joyed the happiness they did. Their married state, was 
one continued honey moon , and if e\er cloud arose to 
dim, before love's sigh it fled, and left its orb the bright- 
er. Prosperous and wealthy, fortune had no charms 
for Mr. Browne, hut as it blessed the object of his af- 
fections. Sbe made srecess delightful : she gave his 
wealth its value. The most splendid equipage — the 
most costly luxuries, the richest retinue— all that vanity 
could invent to dazzle — all that affection could devise, 
to gratify, were her's, and thought too vile for her en- 
joyment. Great as his fortune was, his love outshone 
it, and it seems as if fortune was jealous of the per- 
formance. Proverbially capricious, she withdrew her 
smile, and left him shorn almost of every thing except 
his love, and the fidelity that crowned it. 

The hour of adversity is woman's hour — in the full 
blaze of fortune's rich meridian, her modest beam re- 
tires from vulgar notice, but when the clouds of wo col- 
lect around us, and shades and darkness dim the wan- 
derer's path, that chaste and lovely light shines forth to 
cheer him, an emblem and an emanation of the heavens ! 
—It was then her love, her value, and her power was 
visible. No, it is not for the cheerfulness with which 
she bore the change I prize her — it is not that without 
a sigh she surrendered all the baubles of prosperity — hut 
that she pillowed her poor husband's heart, welcomed ad- 
versity to make him happy, held up her little children as 
the wealth that no adversity could takeaway ; and when 
she found his spirit broken and his soul dejected. With a 
more than masculine understanding, retrieved, in some 
degree, his desperate fortunes, and saved the little wreck 
that solaced their retirement. What w as such a woman 
worth, I ask you ? If you can stop to estimate by dross 
the worth of such a creature, give me even a notary's 
calculation, and tell me than what was she worth to 
him to whom sho had consecrated the bloom of her youth, 
the charm of her innocence, the splendour of her beauty, 



BROWNE V. BLAKE. 151 

the wealth of her tenderness, the power of her genius, 
the treasure of her fidelity ? She, the mother of his chil- 
dren, the pulse of his heart, the joy of his prosperity, the 
solace of his misfortunes — what was she worth to him ? 
Fallen as she is, you may still estimate her , you may see 
her value even in her ruin. The gem is sullied, the dia- 
mond is shivered ; but even in its dust you may see the 
magnificence of its material. After this, they retired to 
Kockville, their seat in the county of Gal way, where 
they resided in the most domestic manner, on the rem- 
nant of their once splendid establishment. The butter- 
flies, that in their noon tide fluttered round them, va- 
nished at the first breath of their adversity; but one early 
friend still remained faithful and affectionate, and that 
was the defendant. Mr Blake is a young gentleman of 
about eight and twenty ; of splendid fortune, polished in 
his manners, interesting in his appearance, with many 
qualities to attach a friend, and every quality to fasci- 
nate a female. Most willingly do I pay the tribute 
which nature claims for him ; most bitterly do I lament 
that he has been so ungrateful to so prodigal a benefac- 
tress. The more Mr. Browne's fortunes accumulated, 
the more disinterestedly attached did Mr, Blake appear 
to him. He shared with him his purse, he assisted him 
with his counsel; in an affair of honour he placed his 
life and character in his hands—he introduced his inno- 
cent sister, just arrived from an English Nunnery, into 
the family of his friend ; he encouraged every recipro- 
city of intercourse between the females ; and, to crown 
all, that no possible suspicion might attach to him, he 
seldom travelled without his Domestic Chaplain ! Now, 
if it shall appear that all this was only a screen for 
his adultery — that he took advantage of his friend's 
misfortune to seduce the wife of his bosom — that he af- 
fected confidence only to betray it — that he perfected 
the wretchedness he pretended to console, and that ia 
the midst of poverty he has left his victim, friendless, 
hopeless, cornpanionless ; a husband without a wife and 
a father without a child. Gracious God! is it not 
enough to turn Mercy herself into an executioner ! You 
convict for murder — here is the hand that murdered in- 
nocence ! You convict for treason — here is the vilest 
disloyalty to fiieudsldn ! — You convict for robbery—* 



io& SlPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

here is one who plundered virtue of her dearest pearl, 
and dissolved it even in the bowl that hospitality held 
out to him ! ! They pretend that he is innocent ! Oh ef- 
frontery the most unblushing ! Oh vilest insult, added 
to the deadliest injury ! Oh base, detestable, and damna- 
ble hypocrisy ! Of the final testimony it is true 
enough their cunning has deprived us ; but under Pro- 
vidence, I shall pour upon this baseness such a flood of 
light, that I will defy, not the most honourable man 
merely, but the most charitable sceptic, to touch the 
Holy Evangelists, and say, by their sanctity, it has 
not been committed. Attend upon me, now, Gentlemen, 
step by step, and with me rejoice, that, no matter how 
cautious may be the conspiracies of guilt, there is a 
Power above to confound and to discover them. 

On the 27th of last January, Mary Hines, one of the 
domestics, received directions from Mrs. Brown, to 
have breakfast ready very early on the ensuing morn- 
ing, as the defendand, then on a visit at the house, 
expressed an inclination to go out to hunt. She was ac- 
cordingly brushing down the stairs at a very early hour, 
when sin observed the handle of the door stir, and fear- 
ing the noise had disturbed her, she ran hastily down 
stairs to avoid her displeasure. She remained below 
about three quarters of an hour, when her master's bell 
ringing violently she hastened to answer it. He asked 
her in some alarm where her mistress was ? naturally 
enough astonished at such a question at such an hour, 
she said she knew not, but would go down and see 
whether or not she was in the parlour. Mr. Browne, 
however, had good reason to be alarmed, for she was so 
extremely indisposed going to bed at night that an ex- 
press stood actually prepared t > bring medical aid from 
Gahvay, unless she appeared better. An unusual de- 
pression both of mind and body preyed upon Mrs, 
Browne on the preceding evening. She frequently burst 
into tears, threw her arms around her husband's neck, 
saying that she was sure another month would separate 
her forever from him and her dear children. It was no 
accidental omen. Too surely the warning of Providence 
was upon her. When the maid was going down, Mr, 
Blake appeared at his door totally undressed, and in a 
tone of much confusion desired that his servant should 



SROWNE W. BLAKE, 15S 

be sent up to him. She went down— as she was about to 
return from her ineffectual search, she heard her mas- 
ter's voice in the most violent indignation, and almost 
immediately after Mrs. Browne rushed past her into the 
parlour, and hastily seizing her writing desk, desired 
her instantly to quit the apartment. Gentlemen, I re- 
quest you will bear every syllable of this scene in your 
recollection, but most particularly the anxiety about the 
writing desk. You will soon find that there was a cogent 
reason for it. Little was the wonder that Mr. Browne's 
tone should be that of violence and indignation. He had 
discovered his wife and friend totally undressed, just as 
they had escaped from the guilty bed-side where they 
stood in all the shame and horror of their situation J He 
shouted for her brother, and I hat miserable brother had 
the agony of witnessing his guilty sister in the bed-room 
of her paramour, both almost literally in a state of nudi- 
ty. Blake! Blake! exclaimed the heart struck-husband, 
is this the return you have made for my hospitality? Oh, 
heavens ! what, a reproach was there ! It was not mere- 
ly, you have dishonoured my bed — it was not merely, 
you have sacrificed my happiness — it was not merely, 
you have widowed me in my youth, and left me the 
father of an orphan family — it was not merely, you have 
violated a compact to which all the world swore a tacit 
veneration—but, you — you have done it, my friend, my 
guest, under the very roof barbarians reverence ; where 
you enjoyed my table, where you pledged my happiness; 
where you saw her in all the loveliness of her virtue, 
and at the very hour when our little helpless children 
were wrapt in that repose of which you have for ever 
robbed their miserable parents ! I do confess when I 
paused here in the perusal of these instructions, the very 
life blood froze within my veins. What, said F, must I 
not only reveal this guilt ! must I not only expose this 
perfidy ! must I not only brand the infidelity of a wife 
and a mother, but must i, amidst the agonies of out- 
raged nature, make the brother the proof of the sister's 
prostitution ! Thank God, gentlemen, J may not be 
obliged to torture you and him and myself, by such in- 
strumentality, 1 think the proof is full without it, 
though it must add another pang to the soul of the poor 
plaintiff, because it must render it almost impossible that 
Ix 



154 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

his little infants are not the brood of tins adulterous de- 
pravity. It will be distinctly proved to you by Bonoria 
Brennan, ancther of the servants, that one night, so 
far back as the May previous to the last mentioned oc- 
currence, when she was in the act of arranging the beds, 
she saw Mr. Blake come up stairs, look cautiously about 
him. go to Mrs. Browne's bed-room door, and tap at it: 
that i. mediately after Mrs. Browne went, with no other 
covering than her shift, to Blake's bed chamber, where 
the guilty parties locked themselves up together, Ter- 
rified and astonished, the maid retired to the servants* 
apartments and in about a quarter of an hour after she 
saw Mrs. Browne in the same habiliments return from 
the bed-room of Blake into her husband's. Gentlemen, 
it was by one of those accidents which so often accom- 
pany and occasion the developement of guilt, that we 
have arrived at this evidence. It was very natural that 
she did not wish cither to expose her mistress, or afflict 
her unconscious master with the recital ; xcry natural 
that, she did not desire to be the instrument of so fright- 
ful a discovery. However, when she found that con- 
cealment was out of the question ; that this action was 
actually in progress, and that the guilty delinquent was 
publicly triumphing in the absence of proof, and through 
an herd of slanderous dependants, cruelly villifying the 
character of his victim ; she sent a friend to Mr. 
Browne, and in his presence, and that of two others, 
solemnly discovered her melancholy information. Gen- 
tlemen, I do entreat of you to examine this woman, 
though she is an uneducated peasant, with all severity, 
because, if she speaks the truth, I think you will agree 
with me, that so horrible a complication of iniquity 
never disgraced the annals of a court of justice. He 
had just risen from the table of his friend — he left, his 
own brother and that friend behind him, and even from 
the very board of his hospitality, he proceeded to the 
defilement of his bed! Of meie adultery I had heard 
before. It was bad enough — a breach of all law, reli- 
gion and morality — but — what shall I call this? — that 
seduced innocence— insulted misfortune— betrayed friend- 
ship — violated hospitality— tore up the very foundations 
of human nature, and hurried its fragments at the vio- 
lated altar, as if to bury religion beneath the ruins of 
society ! Oh, it is guilt might put a Lamon to the blush. 



BROWNE V. BLAKE. 155 

Does out* proof rest here ! No ; though the mind must 
be sceptical that after this could doubt. A guilty cor- 
respondence was carried on between the parties, and 
though its contents were destroyed by Mrs. Browne, on 
the morning of the discovery, still we shall authenti- 
cate the fact beyond suspicion. You shall hear it from 
the very messenger they entrusted — you shall hear from 
him too, that the wife and the adulterer both bound him 
to the utmost secrecy* at once establishing their own 
collusion and theif victim's ignorance, proving, by the. 
very anxiety for concealment, the impossibility of con- 
nivance ; so true it is that the conviction of guilt will 
often proceed even from the stratagem for its security. 
Does our proof rest here? No ; you shall have it from 
a gentleman of unimpeachable veracity, that the defen- 
dant himself confessed the discovery in his bed -room— 
" I will save him," said he, <* the trouble of proving it; 
she was in her shift, and J was in my shirr. I know 
very well a jury will award damages against me; ask 
Browne will he agree to compromise it ; he ow r es me 
some money, and I will give him the overplus in 
horses !" Can you imagine any thing more abominable. 
He seduced from his friend the idol of his soul, and the 
mother of his children, and when he was writhing undtT 
the recent wound, he deliberately offers him brutes in 
compensation ! I will not depreciate this cruelty by any 
comment ; yet. the very brute he would barter for that 
unnatural mother, would have lost its life rather than 
desert its offspring. Now, Gentlemen, what rational 
mind but must spurn the asservation of innocence after 
this ? Why the anxiety about the writing desk ? Why a 
clandestine correspondence with her husband's friend ? 
Why remain, at two different periods, for a quarter o£ 
an hour together, in a gentleman's bed-chamber, with; 
no other habiliment, at one time, than her bed-dress, at 
another than her shift. Is this customary with the mar- 
ried females of this country ? Is this to be a precedent, 
for our wives and daughters, sanctioned too by you, 
their parents and their husbands ? Why did he confess 
that a verdict for damages must go against him, and 
make the offer of that unfeeling compromise? — Was it 
because he was innocent? The very offer wasajudg- 
m*>nt by default, a distinct, undeniable corroboration of 



156 speech ijr the case of 

his guilt. Was it that the female character should not 
suffer? Could there be a more trumpet- tongued procla- 
mation of her criminality? Are our witnesses suborned ? 
Let his army of Counsel sit and torture them. Can 
they prove it? O yes, if it be proveable. Let them pro- 
duce her brother — in our hands, a damning proof to be 
sure; but then, frightful, afflicting, unnatural — in theirs, 
the most consolatory and delightful, the vindication of 
calumniated innocence, and that innocence the inno- 
cence of a sister. Such is the leading outline of our 
evidence — evidence which you will only Wonder is so 
convincing in a case whose very nature presupposes the 
most cautions secrecy. The law, indeed, gentlemen, 
duly estimating the difficulty of final proof in this sjiecies 
of artion has recognized the validity of inferential evi- 
dence, but on that subject his Lordship must direct 
you. 

Do they rely then on the ground of innocency \ If they 
do, I submit to you on the authority of the law, that in- 
ferential evidence is quite sufficient ; and on the authori- 
ty of reason, that in this particular case, the inferential 
testimony amounts to demonstration. Amongst the in- 
numerable calumnies afloat, if has been hinted to me in- 
deed, that they mean to rely u;jon what they denominate 
the indiscretion of the husband. — The moment they have 
the hardihood to resort to that, they, of course, abandon 
all denial of delinquency, and even were it fully proved, 
it is then worth your most serious consideration, whether 
you will tolerato such a defence as that. It is in my 
mind beyond all endurance, that any man should dare 
to come into a Court of Justice, and on the shadowy 
pretence of what he may term carelessness, ground the 
most substantial and irreparable injury. Against the 
unmanly principal of conjugal severity, in the name of 
civilized society I solemnly protest, it is not fitted for 
the meridian, and, 1 hope, will never amalgamate itself 
with the manners of this country — It is the most un- 
generous and insulting suspicion, reduced into the most 
unmanly and despotic practice. 

{( Let barbarous nations whose inhuman love 
Is wild desire, fierce as the suns they feel ; 
Let Eastern tyrants, from the light ot heaven 



BROWNE V. BLAKE, 157 

Seclude (heir bosom slaves, meanly possessed 
Of a mere lifeless violated form — 
While those whom love cements in holy faith, 
And equal transport, free as nature live, 
Disdaining fear." 

But once establish the principle of this moral and do- 
mestic censorship, and then tell me where is it to begin ? 
Where is it to end ? Who shall bound ? Who shall pre- 
face it ? By what hitherto undiscoverahle standard, shall 
we regulate the shades between solemnity and levity? 
Will you permit this impudent espionage upon your 
households ; upon the hallowed privacy of your domestic 
hours ; and for what purpose ? Why, that the seducer 
and the adulterer may calculate the security of his cold- 
blooded libertinism!— that he may steal like an assassin 
upon your hours of relaxation, and convert perhaps your 
confidence into the instrument of your ruin ! If this be 
once permitted as a ground of justification, we may bid 
farewell at once to all the delightful intercourse of social 
life. Spurning as I do at this odious system of organized 
distrust, suppose the admission made, that my client 
was careless, indiscreet, culpable, if they will, in his do- 
mestic regulations, is it therefore to be endured, that 
every abandoned burglar should seduce his wife, or vio- 
late his daughter? Is it to be endured, that Mr. Blake 
of all men should rely on such an infamous and conveni- 
ent extenuation ! He — his friend, his guest, his confi- 
dant, he who introduced a spotless sister to this attainted 
intimacy; shall he say, I associated with you hourly, I 
affected your familiarity for many years. I accompanied 
my domesticated minister of religion to your family; I 
almost naturalized the nearest female relative I had on 
earth, unsullied and unmarried as she was within your 
household: but — you fool — it was only to turn it into a 
brothel ! [ Merciful Gt)d, will you endure him when he 
tells you thus, that he is on the watch to prowl upon the 
weakness of humanity,- and audaciously solicits your 
charter for such libertinism. 

1 have heard it asserted also, that they mean to ar- 
raign the husband as a conspirator, because in the hour 
of confidence and misfortune he accepted a proffered pe- 
cuniary assistance from the man he thought his friend. 
U is true he did so ; but so^ I will say, criminally care^ 



3 58 3l*EECH IN THE CASE OF 

ful was he of his interests that he gave him his bond, 
and made him enter up judgment on that bond, and made 
him issue an execution on that judgment, ready to be 
levied in a day, that in the wreck of all, the friend of 
his bosom should be at least indemnified. Ft was my 
impression indeed, that under a lease of this nature, 
amongst honourable men, so far fro many unwarrantable 
privilege created, there was rather a peculiar delicacy 
incumbent on the donor. I should have thought so still, 
but for a frightful expression of one of the Counsel on 
the motion, by which they endeavoured not to trust a 
Dublin Jury with this issue. — What, exclaimed they, in 
all the pride of their execrable instructions, "poor 
plaintiff and a rich defendant ! Is there nothing in that?" 
Go, if my client's shape does not belie his species, there 
is nothing in that. I braved the assertion as a calumny 
on human nature — I call on you, if such an allegation 
be repeated, to visit it with vindictive and overwhelming 
damages ? I would appeal, not to this civilized assembly, 
hut to a horde of savages, whether it is possible for the 
most inhuman monster thus to sacrifice in infamy, his 
character— his wife —his home— his children! In the 
name of possibility I deny it; in the name of humanity, 
I denounce it ; in the name of our common country, and 
our common nature, I implore of the Learned Counsel 
nit to promulgate such a slander upon both— hut I need 
not do so ; if the seal of advocacy should induce them 
to the attempt, memory would array their happy homes 
before them— their little children would lisp its contra- 
diction — their love — their hearts — their instructive feel- 
ings as fathers and as husbands, would rebel within 
them, and wither up the horrid blasphemy upon their 
lips. 

They will find it difficult to palliate such turpitude — I 
am sure I find it difficult to aggravate. — It is in itself a 
hyperbole of wickedness. Honour, innocence, religion, 
friendship — all that is sanctified or lovely, or endearing 
in creation.— Even that hallowed, social, shall I not 
say indigenous virtue— that blessed hospitality — which 
foreign envy could not deny, or foreign robbery despoil 

which, when all else had perished, cast a bloom on 

our desolation, flinging its rich foliage over the national 
ruin, as if to hide the monument, while it gave a shelter 



BROWNE V. BIAKB. 159 

to tho mourner — even that withered away before that 
pestilence ! But what do I say ! was virtue merely tho 
victim of this adulterer? Worse, worse — it was his in- 
strument — even on the broken tablet of the decalogue 
did he whet the dagger for his social assassination — 
What will you say, when 1 inform you, that a few months 
before, he went deliberately to the baptismal font with 
the waters of life to degenerate the infant that, too well 
could he avouch it, had been born in sin, and he pro- 
mised to teach it Christianity ! And he promised to 
guard it againt « the flesh !" And lest infinite mercy 
should overlook the sins of its adulterous father, seeking 
to make his God his pander, he tried to damn it even 
with the Sacrament! ! — See then the horrible atrocity of 
this case as it touches the defendant — but how can you 
count its miseries as attaching to the plaintiff! He has 
suffered a pang the most agonizing to human sensibility 
— it has been inflicted by his friend, and inflicted beneath 
his roof — it commences at a period winch casts a doubt 
on the legitimacy of his children, and to crown all, 
"upon him a son is born" even since the separation, 
upon whom every shilling of his estates has entailed by 
settlement? What compensation can reprise so unpa- 
ralleled a sufferer ! What solitary consolation is there 
in reserve for him ! Is it love? Alas there was one whom 
he adored with all the heart's idolatry, and she deserted 
him. Is it friendship ? There was one of all the world 
whom he trusted, and that one betrayed him. Is it so- 
ciety ? The smile of others' happiness appears but the 
epitaph of his own. Is it solitude? Can ho be alone 
while memory, striking on the sepulchre of his heart, 
calls into existence the spectres of the past. Shall he fly 
for refuge to his "sacred home !" Every object there is 
eloquent of his ruin ! Shall he seek a mournful solace in 
his children ? Oh, he has no children there is the little 
favourite that she nursed, and there — there — even on its 
guileless features — there is the horrid smile of the adul- 
terer! ! 

Gentlemen, am I this day only the Counsel of my 
client! no — no — I am the advocate of humanity — of 
yourselves — your homes — your wives— your families — - 
your little children ; I am glad that this case exhibits 
such atrocity; unmarked as it is by any mitigatory fea- 



260 SPEECH IN THE CASE Of 

lure, it may stop the frightful advance of this calamity 5 
it will be met now and marked with vengance ; if it be 
not, farewell to the virtues of your country ; farewell 
to all confidence between man and man ; farewell to that 
unsuspicious and reciprocal tenderness, without which 
marriage is but a consecrated curse ; if oaths are to be 
violated ; laws disregarded ; friendship betrayed ; hu- 
manity trampled ; national and individual honour stain- 
ed ; and that a jury of fathers, and of husbands will 
give such miscreancy a passport to their homes, and 
wives and daughters ; farewell to all that yet remains of 
Ireland ! But I will not cast such a doubt upon the cha- 
racter of my country. Against the sneer of the foe, 
and the scepticism of the foreigner, I will still point to 
the domestic virtues, that no perfidy could barter, and 
no liberty can purchase, that with a Roman usage, at 
once embellish and consecrate households, giving to the 
society of the hearth all the purity of the altar; that 
lingering alike in the palace and the cottage, are still to 
be found scattered over this land ; the relic of what she 
was ; the source perhaps of what she may be ; the lone, 
and stately, and magnificent memorials, that rearing 
their majesty amid surrounding ruins, serve at once as 
the land marks of the departed glory, and models by 
which the future may be erected. 

Preserve those virtues with a vestal fidelity; mark 
this day, by your verdict, your horror at their profana- 
tion, and believe me, when the hand which records that 
verdict shall be dust, and the tongue that asks it, trace- 
less in the grave, many a happy home will bless its con- 
sequences, and many a mother teacli her little child to 
lhate the impious treason of adultery. 



IP Q IS © IS 



DELIVERED BY 



MR. PHILLIPS, 



in 



€fie <ffa£e of jftttgcrafo fa. Jfeerr. 



JUiy Lord, and you, Gentlemen of the Jury. 

You have already heard the nature of this action, and 
upon me devolves the serious duty of stating the circum- 
stances in which it has originated. Well indeed may I 
call it a serious duty, whether as it affects the individu- 
als concerned, or the community at large. It is not 
merely the cause of my client, but that of society which 
you are about to try — it is your own question, and that 
of your dearest interests— it is to decide whether there 
is any moral obligation to be respected, any religious 
ordinance to be observed, any social communion to be 
cherished — it is whether all the sympathies of our na- 
ture, and all the charities of our life are to be but the 
condition of a capricious compact which a demoralized 
banditti may dissolve, just as it suits their pleasure or 
their appetite. Gentlemen, it has been the lot of my 
limited experience, to have known something of tlie few 



162 SPEECH IV THE CA9E OF 

cases which have been grasped by our enemies as the 
pretext for our depreciation, and I can safely say, that 
there was scarcely one which, when compared with this, 
did not sink into insignificance. They had all some re- 
deeming quality about thems— ome casual and momentary 
acquaintance some taint of conjugal infidelity — some 
suspicion of conjugal conivance — some unpremeditated 
lapse of some youthful impulse, if not to justify, at least 
to apologize or to palliate. But, in the case before you, 
the friendship is not sudden, but hereditary — the sufferer 
is altogether spotless — the connivance is an unsuspecting 
hospitality ; and so far from having youth to mitigate, 
the criminal is on the very ver^e of existence, forcing a 
reluctant nature into lust, by the mere dint of artificial 
stimulants, and struggling to elirit a joyless flame from 
not even the embers, but the ashes of expiring sensuali- 
ty. One circumstance — one solitary cicum stance can I 
find for consolation, and that is, that no hireling defamer 
can oake this the source of accusation against ourcoun- 
try; an Irishman indeed has been the victim, and this 
land has been the scene of the pollution, but here we stop ; 
its perpetrators, thank heaven, are of distant lineage— 
the wind of Ireland has not rocked their infancy ; they 
have imported their crimes as an experiment on our peo- 
ple — meant, perhaps, to try how far vice may outrun ci- 
vilization — how far our calumniators may have the at- 
testation of Irish fathers, and of Irish husbands, to the 
national deprav ity ; you will tell them they are fatally 
mistaken ,• you will tell a world incredulous to our 
merits, that the parents of Ireland love their little 
children — that her matron's smile is the cheerfulness of 
innocence — that her doors are open to exery guest but 
infamy — and that even in that fatal hour, when the clouds 
collected, and the tempest broke on us, chastity out- 
spread her spotless wings, and gave the household vir- 
tues a protection. — When I name to you my unhappy 
client. I name to you a gentleman upon whom, here, at 
least, I need pass no eulogium. To me, Mr. Fitzgerald 
is only known by his ni fortunes— to you, his birth, his 
boyhood, and up to man's estate, his residence, have 
made him long familiar. 

" This is his owu his native land." 



FITZGERALD V. KERR. 163 

And here, when I assert him warm and honorable — 
spirited and gentle — a man, a gentleman, and a chris- 
tian, if I am wrong, T can be instantly confuted — but if 
I am right, you will give him the benefit of his virtues 
— he will be heard in this his trial hour with commise- 
rating sympathy by that morality whose cause he is the 
advocate, and of whose enemy he is the victim. A 
younger brother the ample estates of his family devolved 
not upon him, and he was obliged to 1 >»»k for competence 
to the labors of a profession. Unhappily for him ho 
chose the army — I say unhappily, because, inspiring bim 
with a soldier's chivalry, it created a too generous cre- 
dulity in the soldier's honor. In the year 1811 he was 
quartered with his regiment in the island of Jersey, and 
there he met Miss Precdone, the sister in law of a bro- 
ther officer, a major Mitchell, of the artillery, and 
married her— she was of the age of fifteen — he of four 
and twenty : never was there an union of more disinte- 
rested attachment. She had no fortune, and he very lit- 
tle, independent of his profession. Gladly, gentlemen, 
could I pause here— gladly would I turn from what 
Mrs. Fitzgerald is, to what she then was ; but I will not 
throw a mournful interest around her, for well I know, 
thai; in despite of all her errors, there is one amongst 
us, who, in his sorrow's solitude, for many a future, year 
of misery, will turn to that darling though delusive vi- 
sion, till his tears shut out the universe. He told me in- 
deed that she was lovely — but the light that gave the gem 
its brilliancy has vanished. Genuine loveliness consists 
in virtue— all else is fleeting and perfidious — it is as the 

orient dawn that ushers in the tempest it is as the green 

and flowery turf, beneath which the earthquake slumbers. 
In a few months my client introduced her to his family, 
and here beneath the roof of his sister, Mrs. Kirwan, 
for some years they lived most happily. You shall hear, 
as well from the inmates as from the habitual visitors, 
that there never was a fonder, a more doating husband, 
and that the affection appeared to be reciprocal. Four 
infant babes, the wretched orphans of their living parents 
— doubly orphaned by a father's sorrows, and a mother's 
shame—looked up to them for protection. Poor little 
innocent unheeding children, alas ! they dream not that 
a world's scorn shall be their inheritance, and misery 



164 SPEECH IN THE CASE OE 

their handmaid from the cradle. As this family increas- 
ed, a separate establishment was considered necessary, 
and to a most romantic little cottage on the estate of his 
brother, and the gift of his friendship, Mr. Fitzgerald 
finally removed his household. 

Here, gentlemen, in this sequestered residence, blest 
with the woman whom he loAed, the children he adored, 
with a sister's society, a brother's counsel, and a charac- 
ter that turned acquaintance into friendship, he f njnyed 
delights of which humanity I fear is not allowed a per- 
manence. The human mind perhaps cannot imagine 
a lot of purer or more perfect happiness. It was a scene 
on which ambition in its laureled hour might look with 
envy ; compared with which the vulgar glories of the 
world are vanity — a spot of such serene and hallowed 
solitude, that the heart must have been stormy and the 
spirit turbid, which its charmed silence did not soothe 
into contentment. Yet, even there, hell's emissary en- 
tered — \t>t even hence the present god was banished — its 
streams were poisoned, and its paths laid desolate — and 
its blosoms, blooming with celestial life, were withered 
into garlands, for the 'empter ! How shall I describe the 
hero' of this triumph? Is there a language that has 
words ot fire to parch whate'er they light 01. ? is there a 
phrase so potently calamitous that its kindness freezes 
and its blessings curse ? But no — if you must see him, 
go to my poor client, upon whose breaking heart he 
crouches like a demon : go to his dead father's sepul- 

cbr« the troubled spirit of that earthly fi iend will 

slunk his maledictory description—go to the orphan in- 
fant's cradle, without a mother's toot to rock, or sire's 
arm to shield it — its wordless cries will pierce you with 
bis rharacte! — or, hear from me the poor and impotent 
narration of his practices — hear how as a friend he mur- 
dered confidence — how as a guest he violated hospitality; 
how as a soldier t»e embraced pollution; how as a man 
he rushed to the perpetration, not merely of a lawless, 
hut an unnatural enjoyment, over e>ery human bliss, and 
boly sacrament, and then say whether it is in mortal 
tongue to epitomize those practices into a characteristic 
eipithet ! He is, you know, gentlemen, an officer of dra- 
goons, and about twenty years ago was in that capacity 
quartered, in this county. His own manners, imposing: 



TITZGETIAXD V. KF.Iitt. 165 

beyond description, and the habitual hospitality of Ire- 
land to the military, rendered his society universally so- 
licited. He was in every house, and welcomed every 
where— nor was there any board more bountifully spread 
for him, or any courtsey more warmly extended, than 
that which he received from the family at Oaklands. Old 
Mr. Fitzgerald was then master of its hereditary man- 
sion, his eldest son just verging upon manhood, and my 
client but a school boy. The acquaintance gradually 
grew into intimacy, the intimacy ripened into friendship, 
and the day that saw the regiment depart, was to his 
generous host a day of grief and tribulation. Year after 
year of separation followed. Captain Kerr escaped the 
vi' issitudes of climate and the fate of warfare— and when 
after a tedious interval the chances of service sent him 
back to Mayo, he found that time had not been indolent 
His ancient friend was in a better world, his old acquain- 
tance in his father's place, and the shoolboy Charles an 
husband and a parent in the little cottage of which you 
have beard already. A family affliction had estranged 
Col. Fitzgerald from bis paternal residence—It was by 
mere chance, while attending the assizes duty, he re- 
cognized in one of the officers of the garrison the friend 
with who<n his infancy had been familiar. You may 
easily guess the gratification he experienced— a gratifi- 
cation mingled with no other regret than that it was so 
soon to vanish. He was about to dissipate by foreign 
travel the melancholy which preyed on him, and could 
not receive his friend with personal hospitality. Surpris- 
ed and delighted, however, he gave him in a luckless 
hour a letter of courtesy to my client, requesting from 
him and his brother-in-law, Mr. Kirwan, every atten- 
tion in their power to bestow. And now, gentlemen, be- 
fore I introduce him to the scene of his criminality, yon 
shall have even the faint unfinished sketch which has 
been given me of his character. Captain Kerr of the 
Royals is very near sixty, he is a native of Scotland, he 
has been all his life a military officer; in other words, to 
the advantage of experience and the polish of travel, he 
adds what lord Bacon calls that «« left handed wisdom," 
with which the thrifty genius of the Tweed has been said 
to fortify her children. Never, 1 am told, did there emi- 
grate from Scotland, a man of more ability, or of more 



166 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

cunning —-one whose address was more capable of inspir- 
ing confidence, or whose arts were better calculated to 
lull suspicion ; years have given him the caution of age, 
without extinguishing the sensibilities of youth ; nature 
made him frugal, and half a century has now matured 
him into a perfect model of thrifty sentiment and amo- 
rous senility ! I shall not depict the darker shades with 
which to me this portraiture has been deformed : if they 
are true, may God forgive him ; his own heart can alone 
supply the pencil with a tint black enough to do them 
justice. His first visit to Oaklands was in company with 
a major Brown, and he at once assumed the air of one 
rather renewing than commencing an acquaintance : 
themes of other days were started — the happy scenes in 
which a parent's image mingled were all spread out be- 
fore a final eye, and when, too soon, their visitor depart- 
ed, he left not behind him the memory of a stranger. 
He was as one whose death had bern untruly rumored — 
a long lost and recovered intimate, dear for his own de- 
serts, and dearer for the memory with which he was as- 
sociated. 

Gentle men, I have the strongest reason for believing 
that even at this instant the embryo of his baseness was 
engendering — that even then, when his buried friend 
stood as it were untombed before him in the person of 
his offspring, the poison seed was sown within the shade 
of whose calamitous maturity nothing of humanity could 
prosper. I cannot toil through the romantic cant with 
which tire hypocrite beguiled this credulous and uncon- 
scious family, but the concluding sentence of his visit is 
too remarkable to be omitted. « It is, « said he awak- 
ing out of a reverie of admiration, « it is all a paradise : 
there (pointing to my client,) there is Adam— she (his 
future victim,) she is Eve— and that (turning to major 
Brown,) that is the devil !" Perhaps he might have been 
felicitous in the last exemplification. This of course 
seemed but a jest, and raised the laugh that was intend- 
ed. But it was "poison in jest," it was an "lago pre- 
lude," of which inferior crime could not fancy the con- 
clusion. Remember it, and you will find that, jocular 
as it was, it had its meaning — that it was not, as it pur- 
ported, the jocularity of innocence, but of that murder- 
ous and savage nature that prompts the Indian to his 



FITZGERALD V. KERR. 167 

odious gambol round the captive he has destined to the 
sacrifice. — The intimacy thus commenced, was, on the 
part of the defendant, strictly cultivated. His visits 
were frequent — his attentions indefatigable — his appa- 
rent interest beyond doubt, beyond description. You 
may have heard, my lord, that there is a class of per- 
sons who often create their consequence in a family by 
contriving to become master of its secrets. An adept in 
this art, beyond all rivalry, was captain Kerr — not only 
did he discover all that had reality, but he fabricated 
whatever advanced his purposes, and the confidence he 
acquired was beyond all suspicion from the sincerity he 
assumed and the recollections he excited. VVho could 
doubt the mau who writhed in agony at every woe, and 
gave with his tears a crocodile attestation to the veracity 
of his invention ! From the very outset of this most na- 
tural though ill omened introduction, his only object was 
discord and disunion, and in the accomplishment he was 
but too successfull. How could he be otherwise? He 
seized the tenderest passes of the human heart, and ruled 
them with a worse than wizard despotism. Mrs. Fitz- 
gerald was young and beautiful — her husband affectio- 
nate and devoted — he thirsted for the possession of the 
one — he determined on his enjoyment, even thro' the 
perdition of the other. The scheme by which he effected 
this — a scheme of more deliberate atrocity perhaps you 
never heard ! Parts of it I can relate, but there are 
crimes remaining, to which even if our law annexed a 
name, I could not degrade myself into the pollution of 
alluding. The commencement of his plan was a most 
ostentatious affection for every branch of the Fitzgerald 
family. The vvellfare of my client — his seclusion at 
Oaklands — the consequent loss of fortune and of fame, 
were all the subjects of his minute solicitude! It was a 
pity forsooth that such talents and such virtues should 
defraud the world of their exercise — he would write to 
Gen. Hope to advance him — he would resign to him his 
own pay masters hip — in short, there was no personal, no 
pecuniary sacrifice which he was not eager to make, out 
of the prodigality of his friendship ! The young, open, 
warm-hearted Fitzgerald, was caught by this hypocrisy 
— the sun itself was dark and desultory compared with 
the steady splendor of the modern Fabricius. 



168 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

It followed, gentlemen, as a matter of course, that he 
was allowed an almost unbounded confidence in the fami- 
ly. His friendly intercourse with Mrs. Fitzgerald, tlie 
husband of neither had an idea of misinterpreting. In 
the mean time the temper of Mrs. Fitzgerald became 
perceptibly embittered — the children, about whom she 
had ever been affectionately solicitous, were now neglect- 
ed -the ornamenting of the cottage, a favorite object al- 
so, was totally relinquished — nor was this the worst of 
it. She became estranged from her husband-— peevish 
to Mrs. Kirwan — her manner evincing constant agita- 
tion, and her mind visibly maddened b) some powerful 
though mysterious agenry. Of this change as well lie 
might, Capt. Kerr officiously proclaimed himself the 
discoverer — with mournful affectation he obtruded his 
interference, volunteering the admonitions he had ren- 
dered necessary. You ran ha\e no idea of the dextrous 
duplicity with which he arted. To the unfortunate Mrs. 
Fitzgerald he held up the allurements w ith which vice 
conceals and decorates its deformity — her beauty, her 
talents, the triumphs which awaited In i in the world of 
London, the injustice of concealing nt in her present soli- 
tude, were the alternative topics of his smooth tongue, 
iniquity, till at length, exciting her vanity, and extin- 
guishing her reason by •« spells and drugs and a» cursed 
incantations/' he juggled away her innocence and her 
virtue? To the afflicted Mrs. Kirwan he was all afflic- 
tion, weeping over the propensities he afFected to dis- 
cover in bis wretched victim, detailing atrocities he had 
himself created, defaming and degrading the guilty dupe 
of his artifices, and counselling the instant separation 
which was to afford him at once impunity and enjoyment. 
Trusted by all parties, he was true to none — Every day 
maligning Mrs. Fitzgerald to the rest of the family; 
when it came to her ears, he cajoled hei into the belief that 
it was quite necessary he should appear her enemy, that 
their serret love might be less suspected! Imposing on 
Mrs. Kirwan, the fabricated tale of Mrs. Fitzgerald's 
infamy, he petrified her virtuous mind beyond the possi- 
bility of explanation ! With Capt. Fitzgerald he mourn- 
ed over his woes, enjoining silence while he was stu- 
diously augmenting them. To Col. Fitzgerald he wrote 
letters of condolence and commiseration, even while the 



FITZGERALD V. KERR. 169 

pen of his guilty correspondence with his sister in law 
was wet ! Do I overstate this treachery ? Attend not to 
me —listen to his own letters— the most conclusive illus- 
trations of his cruelty and his guilt. Thus, gentlemen, 
he writes to Col. Fitzgerald, apprising him of the result 
of his introduction. "I have been much with your family 
and friends— it is unnecessary for me to say how happy 
they have made me— I must have been very miserable but 
for their society— I have been received like a brother, 
and owe gratitude for life to every soul of them. They 
have taught me of what materials an Irishman's heart is 
made— but alas ! I have barely acknowledgements to 
offer." Now judge what those acknowledgements were 
by this extract from his letter to Mrs. Fitzgerald :-— 
" Your conduct is so guided by excessive passion, that it 
is impossible for me to trust you. I think the woman 
you sent means to betray us both, and nothing on earth 
can make me think to the contrary— but rest assured I 
shall act with that caution which will make me impene- 
trable. I would wish to make you really happy, and if 
you cannot be as respectable as you have been, to ap- 
proach it as near as possible. I never cease thinking of 
you and of your advantage. Trust but to me— obey my 
advice and you will gain your wishes; but you shall im- 
plicitly obey me, or I quit you forever!" Mark again 
his language to the Colonel : « I must confess the fate 
of your brother Charles I most dreadfully lament— look 
to the fate of a man of his age, and so fine a fellow, 
pinned down in this corner of the world, unnoticed and 
unknown. — Yet what is the use of every quality situated 
as he is — his regrets are his own, they must be cutting — 
his prospects with so young and inexperienced a family, 
they dare hardly be looked to, and to these if you add 
ambition and affections, can you look on without pitying 
a brother ? This earth indeed would be an heaven could 
a good man execute what he proposes — the heart of many 
a good man dare not bear examination, because his ac- 
tions and resolutions are so much at variance. Bear 
with me, Tom — the children of Col. Fitzgerald are my 
brothers and sisters, and may God se judge me as t feel 
the same kind of affection for them." Contrast that, 
gentlemen, with the following paragraph to the wife of 
one of those very brothers, the unfortunate Charles, ar- 
z 



170 SPEECH IN THE CASE OE 

ranging her elopement ! U For the present remain where 
you are, but pack up all your clothes that you have no 
present occasion for — you can certainly procure a chest 
of some kind — if your woman is faithful she can manage 
the business — let her take out that chest to Castlebar; 
and let her send it to me ; but let her take care that the 
carrier has no suspicion from whence it comes—stir not 
one step without my orders— obey me implicitly, unless 
you tell me that you care not for me one pin-— in tl^atcase 
manage your own affairs in future, and see what comes 
of yo»» M Thus, gentlemen, did this Janus-fronted trai- 
tor, abusing Mrs. Kirwan by fabricated crimes — defam- 
ing Mrs. Fitzgerald by previous compact — confiding in 
all — extorting from all and betraying all — on the gene- 
ral credulity and the general deception found the accom- 
plishment of his odious purposes! There was but one 
feature wanted to make his profligacy peculiar as it was 
infamous. It had the grand master touches of the demon, 
the outlines of gigantic towering deformity, perfidy, adul- 
tery, ingratitude, and it-religion, flung in the frightful 
energy of their combination ; but it wanted something 
to make it despicable as well as dreadful ; some petty, 
narrow, grovelling meanness that would dwarf down the 
terrific magnitude of its crime, and make men scorn 
while they shuddered — and it wants not this. Only 
think of him when he was thus trepanning, betrayingand 
destroying, actually endeavoring to wheedle the fami- 
ly into the settlement of an annuity on bis intended pros- 
titute. You shall have it from a u itness — you shall have 
it from his own letter, where he says to Mrs. Fitzgerald, 
•« where is your annuity. I dare say you will answer 
me you are perfectly indifferent, but believe me I urn 
not." Oh, no, no, no — the seduction of a mother — the 
calamity of a husband — the desolation ©f a household — ■ 
the utter contempt of morals and religi m — the cold 
blooded assassination of character and ot happiness, were 
as nothing compared to the expenditure of a shilling — 
he paused not to consider the ruin he was inflicting, but 
the expense he was incurring— »a prodigal in crime — a 
miser in remuneration — he brought together the licen- 
tiousness of youth and the avarice of age, calculating on 
the inheritance of her plundered infants to defray the 
harlotry of their prostituted mother? Did you ever hear 



¥ITZGERALD V. KERR. 171 

\)i turpitude like this ? Did you ever hear of such broker- 
age in iniquity ? If there is a single circumstance to rest 
upon for consolation, perhaps, however, it is in the ex- 
posure of his parsimony. He has shewn where he can 
he made to feeU and in the very commission of his crime, 
providentially betrayed the only accessible avenue to his 
punishment. Gentlemen of the jury, perhaps some of 
you are wondering why it is that I have so studiously 
abstained from the contemplation of my client. It is 
hecause I cannot think of him without the most unaffect- 
ed anguish. It is because, possible as it is for me to 
describe his feelings, it is not possible for you adequately 
to conceive them. You have home and wife and children 
dear to you, and cannot fancy the misery of their depri- 
vation. I might as well ask the young mountain peasant, 
breathing the wild air of health and liberty, to feel the 
iron of the inquisition's captive — 1 might as well journey 
to the convent grate, and ask religion's virgin devotee 
to paint that mother's agony of heart who finds her first- 
born dead in her embraces! Their saddest visions would 
be sorrow's mockery — to be comprehended misery must 
be felt, and he who feels it most can least describe it. 
What is the world with its vile pomps and vanities now to 
my poor client? He sees no world except the idol he lias 
lost — wherever he goes, her image follows him — she fills 
that gaze else bent on vacancy — the " highest noon" of 
fortune now would only deepen the shadow that pursues 
him — even ** nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep," gives 
him no restoration— she comes upon his dream as when 
he saw her first in beauty's grace and virtue's loveliness 
— as when she heard him breathe his timid passion, and 
blushed the answer that blest him with its return — he 
sees her kneel — he hears her vow — religion registers 
what it scarce could chasten, and there, even there, where 
paradise reveals itself before him, the visionary world 
vanishes, and wakes him to the hell of his reality. Who 
ean tell the misery of this ? Who can even fancy it that 
has not felt it? Who can fancy bis soul-riving endurance 
while his foul mentor gradually goaded him from love 
into suspicion, and from suspicion into madness ! — Alas I 

,{ What damned minutes tells he o'er 
Whodoats yet doubts — suspects yet strongly loves." 



\72 SPEECH IN THE CASE Oi 

Fancy, if you can, the accursed process by which his 
affection was shaken — his fears aroused — his jealousy 
excited, until at last mistaking accident for design, and 
shadows for confirmation, he sunk under the pressure of 
the human vampyre that crawled from his father's grave 
to clasp him into ruin! Just imagine the catalogue of 
petty frauds by which in his own phrase he made himself 
(i impenetrable ,, — -how he invented — how he exaggerated 
— how he pledged his dupe to secrecy, while he blacken- 
ed the character of Major Brown, with whom he daily 
associated on terms of intimacy — how he libelled the wife 
to the husband, and the husband to the wife — how he 
wound himself round the very heart of his victim, with 
evevy embrace coiling a deadlier tortuie, till at last he 
drove him for refuge in the woods, and almost to suicide, 
for a remedy. Now gentlemen, let us concede for a mo- 
ment the veracity of his inventions. Suppose this woman 
to be worse than he represented — why should he reveal 
it to the unconscious husband ? All was happiness before 
his interference — all would be happiness still but for his 
murderous amity — why should he awaken him from his 
dream of happiness — why should he swindle himself into 
a reluctant confidence for the atrocious purpose of cre- 
ating discord ? — What family would be safe if every little 
exploded calumny was to be revived, and every forgotten 
ember to be fanned into conflagration ? Is such a charac- 
ter to be tolerated in the community ? But even this in- 
dolent defence is wanting — you will find that self was his 
first and last and sole consideration-— you will find that it 
was he who soured this woman till she actually refused to 
live any longer under the roof with her husband and her 
children — you will find that in the midst of his counsel, 
his cant, and his sensibility, he himself was the profli- 
gate .adulterer — you will find that he ruled her with a rod 
of iron — you will find that having once seduced her into 
crime, he compelled her to submit to degradation too 
loathsome for credulity, if it was not too monstrous for 
invention — you will find that his pretence for enforcing 
this disgusting ordeal was a doubt of her previous inno- 
cence, which it alone, he asserted, could eradicate — you 
will find heron her knees, weeping, almost fainting, of- 
ferine oaths upon oaths to save herself from the pollution 
-and vou will find at last, when exhausted nature could 



FITZGERALD V. KERR. 175 

no longer struggle, the foul adulterer actually perpetra- 
ting — but no— the genius of our country rises to rebuke 
me— I hear her say to me-" forbear — forbear--! have 
suffered iri the field— I have suffered in the senate -I 
have seen my hills bedewed with the blood of my children 
—my diadem in dust — my throne in ruins — but Nature 
still reigns upon my plains — the morals of my people 
are as yet unconquered — forbear — forbear — disclose not 
<;rimes of which they are unconscious — reveal not the 
knowledge, whose consequence is death." I will obey 
the admonition — -nor from my lips shall issue the odious 
crimes of this mendicinal adulterer — not by my hand 
shall the drapery be withdrawn that screens thisTiberian 
sensuality from the public execration ! God of Nature ! 
had this been love forgetting forms in the pure impetu- 
osity of its passions — had it been youth, transgressing 
rigid law and rigid morals — had it been desire, mad in 
its guilt, and guilty even in its madness, I could have 
dropped a tear over humanity in silence ; but when I see 
age — powerless, passionless, remorseless, avaricious age, 
drugging its impotence into the capability of crime, and 
zesting its enjoyment by the contemplation of misery, 
my voice is not soothed but stifled in its utterance, and 
I can only pray for you, fathers, husbands, brothers — 
that the Almighty may avert this omen from your faini- 
lies! 

Gentlemen of the jury, if you feel as I do, you will re- 
joice with me that this odious case is near to its conclu- 
sion. You will have the facts before you — proof of the 
friendship — proof of the confidence— proof of the treach- 
ery, and eye-witnesses of the actual adultery. It remains 
but to enquire what is the palliation for this abominable 
turpitude. Is it love ? — Love between the tropic and the 
pole! Why he has a daughter older than his victim — he 
has a wife whose grave alone should be the altar of his 
nuptials — he is of an age when a shroud should be his 
wedding garment. 1 will not insult you by so prepostc 
rous a supposition. Will lie plead connivance in the hus- 
band — that fond, affectionate, devoted husband ? I dare 
him to the experiment — and if he makes it — it is not to 
his intimates, his friends, or even to the undeviating tes- 
timony of all his enemies, that I shall refer you for his 
vindication— but I will call him into court* and in the 



1T4 SPEECH IN tHE CASE O* 

altered mien, and mouldering form, and furrowed cheek 
of his decaying youth, I will bid you read the proofs of 
connivance. But, gentlemen, he has not driven to con- 
jecture his palliation, his heartless industry has blown 
through the land : and what do you think it is ? Oh, 
would to God 1 could call the whole female world to its 
disclosure ! Oh, if there be within our island's bounda- 
ries one hapless maid, who lends ear to the seducer's 
poison— one hesitating matron whose husband and whose 
children the vile adulterer devotes to desolation, let them 
how hear to what the flattery of vice will turn; let them 
see when they have lerelled the fair fabric of their inno- 
cence and their virtue, with what remorseless haste their 
foul destroyer will rush over their ruins ! Will you be- 
lieve it? That he who knelt to this forlorn creature, 
soothed her vanity, adored her failings, and deified her 
faults, now justifies the pollution of her person by the 
defamation of her character ! Not a single act of indis- 
cretion — not an instance, perhaps of culpable levity in 
her whole life, which he has not ranked together for the 
purpose of publication. Unhappy woman, may heaven 
have pity on her ! Alas ! how could she expect that he 
who sacrificed a friend to his lust, would protect a mis- 
tress from his avarice ? But will you permit him to take 
shelter under this act of dishonorable desperation ? Can 
he expect not even sympathy, but countenance from a 
tribunal of high-minded honorable gentlemen ? Will not 
you say, that his thus traducing the poor fallen victim of 
his artifices, rather aggravates than diminishes the ori- 
ginal depravity ? Will you not spurn the monster whose 
unnatural vice, combining sensuality, hypocrisy, and 
crime, could stoop to save his miserable dross, by the 
defamation of his victim ? Will you not ask him by what 
title he holds this inquisition I Is it not by that of an 
adulterer, a traitor, a recreant *o every compact between 
man and man, and between earth and heaven ! 

If this heartless palliation was open to all the world, 
is not he excluded from it ? He her friend — her husband's 
friend— her husband's father's friend — her family ad- 
viser, who quaffed the cup of hospitality, and pledged 
his host in poison — he who, if you can believe him, found 
this young and inexperienced creature tottering on 'he 
brink, and, under pretence of assisting, dragged her 



FITZGERALD Y. KERR. 175 

down the precipice ! will he, in the whole host of stran- 
gers, witlrwhose familiarity he defames her, produce one 
this day vile enough to have followed his example ; one 
out of seven of the skipping, dancing, and worthless tribe, 
whose gallantry sunk into ingratitude, whose levity sub- 
limed itself into guilt ? No, no ; " imperfectly civilized" 
as his countrymen have called us, they cannot deny that 
there is something generous in our barbarism ; that we 
could not embrace a friend while we were planning his 
destruction ; that we could not sit at his table while we 
were profaning his bed ; that we could not preach mo- 
rality while we were perpetrating crime ; and, above all, 
if in the moment of our nature's weakness, when reason 
sleeps and passion triumphs, some confiding creature had 
relied upon our honor, we could not dash her from us in 
her trial hour, and for her purse's safety turn the cold- 
blooded assassin of her character. But, my lord, I ask 

you not as a father not as a husband — but as a guardian 

of the morals of this country, ought this to be a justifi- 
cation of an adulterer? And if so, should it justify an 
adulterer under such circumstances? Has any man a 
right to scrutinize the constitution of every female in a 
family, that he may calculate on the possibility of her 
seduction ? Will you instil this principle into society ? 
Will you instil this principle into the army ? Will you 
disseminate such a principle of palliation— what ? The 
ruin of an household — the sacrifice of a friend — the worse 
than murder of four children — the most inhuman perfidy 
to an host, a companion, a brother in arms ? Will you 
permit it ? I stand not upon her innocence— I demand 
vengence on this most unnatural villainy. Suppose I con- 
cede his whole defence to him, suppose she was begrim- 
ed as black as hell, was it for him to take advantage 
of her turpitude ? He a friend— a gu<;st — a confidant^a 
brother soldier ! Will you justify him, even in any event, 
in trampling on the rights of friendship, of hospitality, 
of professional fraternity, of human nature? Will you 
convert the man into the monster ? Will you convert the 
soldier into the foe, from being the safe -guard of the citi- 
zen ? Will you not fear the reproaches of departed glory ? 
Will you fling the laurelled flag of England, scorched 
with the cannon flame, and crimsoned with the soldier's 
life-blood; the flag of countless fights, and every fight a 



176 SPEECH IV THE CASE 0* 

victory; wi'l you fling it athwart the couch of his ac- 
cursed harlotry, without almost expecting that the field 
sepulchre will heave with life, and the dry bones of 
buried armies rise re-animate against profanation r No, 
no ; I call upon you by the character of that army not to 
contaminate its trophies; I call on yon in the cause of 
nature to vindicate its dignity ; I call on you by your 
happy homes to protect them from profanation ; I call on 
you by the love you bear your little children, not to let 
this christian Herod loose amongst the innocents. Oh ! 
as you venerate the reputation of your country; as you 
regard the happiness of your species: as you hope for 
the mercy of that all wise and protecting God who has 
set his everlasting cannon against adultery; banish this 
day by a vindictive verdict the crime and. the criminal 
forever from amongst us." 

After a trial, Which lasted for seventeen hours, the 
jury found a verdict for the plaintiff of FIFTEEN 
HUNDRED POINDS damages and six pence costs. 



FIKIS. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper pre. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: April 2009 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



